Brothers in Arms
by tigerkity
Summary: StargateMacGyver Crossover. Jack and Mac share a common enemy that tries to take them out.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Brothers In Arms**

**Author: tigerkity**

**Pairings: none**

**Disclaimer: Jack and Mac are unfortunately not mine, as well as their TV companions. I do not make any money from this and no copyright infringement is intended.**

Author's Note: My story has weird timing, it just worked out that way. It is in Stargate season 4/5, complete with the year in between the original Abydos mission and the Stargate's reactivation. But here is where it gets a little complicated: On the MacGyver side, Pete never went blind, obviously, and Mac is still working with Phoenix, but he has aged (because Jack is older in 'Stargate' than Mac was in 'MacGyver') still following? Oh well, read on. It'll sort itself out, I promise. Also, Feedback of all kinds is appreciated.

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_"Through these fields of destruction  
Baptisms of fire  
Ive watched all your suffering  
As the battles raged higher  
And though they did hurt me so bad  
In the fear and alarm  
You did not desert me  
My brothers in arms" - Dire Straits 'Brothers In Arms'_

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"Make yourself at home Pete," MacGyver called after unlocking the door to his houseboat. He tossed the keys to his jeep on the kitchen counter and dropped his overnight bag on the couch. He walked over to the fridge and pulled out various fruits.

"You can go put your stuff upstairs on the bed, I'll take the couch tonight. Hey, Pete, I'm gonna make myself a smoothie. You want anything?"

"Naw thanks, but if ya got apple juice, I'll have some. Thanks."

MacGyver headed towards the cabinet and pulled out two glasses. He noticed one had dirty smudge on it and he wiped it on his shirt to see if it was something that he could get off. Once he realized that whatever the dirt that was on it wasn't baked on, he gently put it in the sink to be cleaned later and pulled out another glass from the cabinet.

He cut up some of the fruits he got out of the fridge earlier and put them in a blender along with a little bit of milk to make it more of a drink instead of just sludge. He put the blender on high and opened up the fridge again to get out some apple juice for his friend. It was then he noticed that Pete was heading back down the stairs with something in his hand.

"Hey Mac, when was this picture of you taken?"

"Hold on Pete, I can't hear you." He turned off the blender and the noise immediately stopped. "Okay, now what did you say?"

"I asked when was this picture of you taken?"

Mac grabbed a towel that was hanging on the edge of a lower cabinet and walked towards Pete while drying his hand of fruit juices. "What picture of me?"

"This one here. It was by your bed."

Now Mac was confused, he never kept a picture of himself by his bed. He had a picture of Harry and… oh.

When Pete was stowing his bags in Mac's room, he had noticed a picture of Mac with short hair on the bedside table. He had gone over to get a better look as he had remembered that he had never seen his best friend with shorter hair, but once he looked closely he realized that it couldn't have been too long ago because the shortest his hair had been was when he had first met him, and it was much darker. In the picture, though, it was a light, honey brown color, like Mac's was now, but then there was the fact that it was a lot shorter, almost military. He would have surely realized if Mac had cut his hair, especially to that extent. He picked it up and brought it back down to ask him about it.

What he wasn't expecting was Mac's reaction to the picture. The moment he saw the photo, he gently took it out of Pete's hands and stared at it with an almost wistful, and melancholy look. His eyes had softened and glazed over as if he was recalling some long passed memory.

_/flashback/_

_"Hey Mac, do you really think you should keep this out in the open like this?"_

_"Yeah Jack why not?" Jack was holding a picture of himself that Mac had taken a couple months ago back at their cabin in Minnesota. _

_"Someone's gonna see it," He pointed out._

_"So they'll see it. They'll just think it's me, they always have and so they always will." _

_"Yeah, don't remind me. Okay bro, it's you who will have to answer all the questions, not me." Jack picked up his bag and headed down the stairs, with Mac following right behind him. Once they got to the bottom of the stairs, Jack turned around and embraced his younger brother in a familial hug. They then stepped back and looked into each other's eyes._

_"Have a safe trip Jack. Watch your back."_

_"Always bro, always. I'll miss ya."_

_"Me too."_

_"Stay safe." With that, Jack turned and headed out the door. He was still holding the handle when he turned back around and jokingly gave Mac a parting piece of advice to sort of lighten the mood of sadness, "Oh, and Mac, watch out for those damsels in distress. Alright?" _

_MacGyver chuckled at the long running joke between them. His brother had always teased him that it seemed like almost every week he was rescuing some fair maiden from the terrible dangers of the streets of LA. _

_"I will Jack, if you stop being such an annoyance to the chain of command."_

_With a mock evil laugh he responded, "Never!"_

_"Same here," he answered. Jack closed the door and Mac wondered if he would ever see him again. They could never really safely visit each other normally like other families could; their visits were few and far between. 'Don't think like that Mac,' he told himself, 'No one can kill that guy; he always turns up, eventually, just like the proverbial penny. You couldn't get rid of him that easily.' With a soft snort of amusement, he quietly went back to his life as if nothing had happened; that was the only way it could be._

_/end flashback/_

"Mac? Mac, you alright?" MacGyver shook his head gently, and his eyes refocused, as if waking from a dream.

"Yeah. Yeah Pete, I'm okay," he tried to reassure his best friend.

"You sure? You looked like you went off in your own world there for a second."

"I'm _fine_ Pete, really. It's just…well, it just that this picture brought back a memory I had forgotten about for a long time."

Pete was very curious about what it was that Mac was thinking about so he tried to press him for some more info, "_Yeah…_what about?"

"Nothin' much really, just stuff."

He always knew when Mac was trying to evade an issue, and this was one of those times. He didn't have the gall to say, 'it's none of your business, so get the hell out!' Mac was too nice for that.

He couldn't tell Pete who it really was in that picture. It wasn't that he didn't trust him, he trusted Pete with his life but it was more a matter of whom he didn't trust. He could never know who was listening. Sure, he checked the house for bugs at least once a week, but, as the person in the picture had said, "The ears have walls Mac." He let out a chortle at that thought. Butchered sayings like that was what made Jack Jack. He shook his head as he walked to the stairs, going back up to replace the photo on his nightstand.

"Oh, Pete, your juice is on the counter. Help yourself."

"Okay Mac, thanks." Pete picked up his glass and wondered at his friend's sudden change of behavior. He was acting sort of odd. He had laughed at a picture of himself. '_Ooooookay. _He probably just needs some rest, that's all.'

MacGyver had just placed the picture down when the phone rang. He sat down on the bed and picked it up,

"Hello?"

"Mac?" A desperate and very familiar voice answered.

"Jack? Oh my god…. what, what happened? Are you okay?" Something was very, very off. One, Jack never blatantly called him like this, there was usually a lot of smoke and mirrors involved. Two, Jack sounded like shit, and worse, he sounded nervous. Jack was never nervous. Three, he should have known and anticipated Lady Fate. He had been thinking about Jack, and in the past whenever that happened, Jack had always shown up, usually bringing a whole lot of mischief and trouble with him. But, as they had grown up, the mischief became more dangerous. Mac shuddered to think what trouble his brother could find now, as a grown man.

"Slow down there big guy. I was just in the…ah…I was just ah in the neighborhood, marina." Mac noticed that he had sounded distracted, like he was watching out for something in particular.

"If ya can, you better stay put for a little bit. I've got company."

"So I've noticed."

"His name's Pete, he's my best friend and he's my boss."

"Thornton, right, bald and reminds me of my CO?" Mac rolled his eyes,

"Yeah, that's the one. Hold on a minute or two, I'll clear the house for ya. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Sounds good…thanks."

"Jack," He sighed, "Be careful…and don't make a mess."

"Hey that wasn't my fault!" Jack retaliated. 'It was those damn rent-a-thugs,' he thought.

"Just, never mind. I'll see ya later. Where are ya?"

"I'm in the phone booth overlooking the marina. Come on, where'd ya think?"

"Jack-"

"Gotta go Mac, see ya later." The phone connection cut off.

"Later Jack" Mac quickly headed down the stairs, and desperately tried to think of a reason to get Pete out of the house.

"Who was that on the phone?"

"Phone? Oh…uh…just, Phoenix. They said they had some paperwork they needed you to sign off on, immediately."

"Now? Can't it wait a couple hours?"

"Apparently not. Need a lift?"

"Yeah sure thanks. I appreciate it."

"No problem Pete." He ushered his friend out the door, quickly down the dock and up to his jeep. Mac tried to inconspicuously search the area for his brother. He knew he was there, he could _feel _him; he just couldn't see him. He sighed and gave up. He knew that if Jack didn't want to be seen, then it was damn near impossible to. He got into his jeep and drove away to take Pete to Phoenix.

He knew that his impromptu cover about paperwork would hold. There was always a lot of paperwork coming out of the Phoenix Foundation. It was a wonder. Sometimes he thought that all the time he spent trying to get people aware about saving the forests was just trying to make up for all the trees cut down to push that amount of paper across the numerous desks at the Foundation.

Any ideas on where this is going? first one to come up with the answer gets a hundred points!


	2. Chapter 2

I had an unusual amount of "me time" to write this, so unfortunately, in thefuture, don't count on me being able to update this fast. sorry, I wish I could, but I'm not the fastest writer out there, I wish.

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They hadn't seen each other for a long time. 'God it must have been at least six years,' he thought. The last time, MacGyver had shown up at his older brother's door when he had heard of his nephew's death. He hadn't met Charlie, although he really wished that he could, but the few times he had spoken to Jack over the phone, Charlie was all he would talk about:

"Mac, I wish ya could have seen it! The way he smacked that ball outta the park, man, you should've seen _his_ face…"

"He made the team Mac. The coach is talking about making him the captain of the hockey team…"

"He just got all A's on his report card. Last semester he got a 'B' in math, he's doing better now…"

The pride had been obvious. No father was more proud or more in love with his son than Jack had been with Charlie. Then, one day, the phone calls had stopped; not that they were all that common to begin with, but it was an ominous silence. He and Jack had a type of connection, one that they both had known was unique to them and only them, it was probably the most important secret between them. Through that connection Mac had known something was wrong. He had felt depressed and anxious and knew that he was picking up on Jack, so he had chanced a trip to Colorado Springs to check up on him.

Jack had been such a mess and wouldn't listen to any logic. He had been terrified, the most frightened that he had ever been in his whole life: Jack blamed himself for his son's death and was suicidal. He was scared that he was going to lose the only family he had left, and from that fear he did something illogical: he fled. He ran to their cabin in Minnesota, not knowing what to do. After a week of Mac hiding, Jack had shown up, back to normal. Sure the grief and self-blame were still there, but they no longer consumed him nor threatened to destroy him. He was back to his normal mischievous, sarcastic self, and that had Mac relieved. That was when Mac had taken the picture of Jack sitting on the dock, fishing, that he kept in his bedroom.

He was curious what had brought about the sudden change, but then Jack had said that one little word that was the cause of so much trouble and grief...one adjective that had robbed them both of a normal life or family relationship:

CLASSIFIED

Jack had been Black Ops and over half of his life fell under that wretched word. The things he had done were so secretive that if it wasn't for the fact that Jack was the one who had to carry out the deeds, _he_ probably wouldn't have enough security clearance to know what he did.

Mac's life, early on as freelance for the DXS, had also been secretive. At the beginning of their careers, both brothers had agreed to go in and delete any trace of a link that would tie the two together. It had taken a long time, but working together they succeeded. Because of the circumstances surrounding their jobs, they had decided that they didn't want to put each other in danger by having numerous enemies use one against the other. It was Jack's way of protecting Mac, and it was Mac's way of protecting Jack, and they both knew it without having to vocalize their intentions.

Since then, they couldn't risk visits, unless something went really wrong, which with the two of them it so often did, and the need to be together overrode the possible repercussions. They kept in touch over the years only with sparse, and extremely secure phone calls. It had been a while since the last time they spoke to each other, and even longer since they had been face to face, so it had come as a big surprise for Mac to find Jack on his doorstep.

He couldn't see any lights on, but it didn't fool him. He knew that Jack was inside. He had lost Pete at Phoenix and had rushed back home as soon as he could. MacGyver cautiously opened the door, steeling himself to anticipate the worst. He peered inside and breathed a sigh of relief: nothing was out of place. He was half expecting the place to be ransacked, again.

"Jack?"

"Up here." The voice came from his bedroom.

He headed up the spiral staircase that led to the second story of his houseboat. As he neared the last step, Jack hobbled out of the bathroom wearing a torn and bloody shirt. He was pale and looked to Mac like he was suffering the effects of coming down off an adrenaline high. He only paused for a split second, shocked by the condition his twin brother was in, before he rushed forward and caught him before he fell in a heap on the floor.

"What and where?" he asked while he led him over to the bed to lie down.

"Knife. Right side," neither of them were strangers to the various forms of trauma that could be inflicted on the human body. It was an occupational hazard, not to mention their knack of attracting trouble. "It's nothing big Mac, just barely a scratch. I already took care of it." Jack batted the other man's searching hands away from his shirt in a weak attempt to get him to leave him alone. It was then that MacGyver registered what he had been seeing out of the corner of his eye: many dirty and bloody bandages littering the floor of his bathroom. His concern escalated and it became even more important for him to find out how bad it really was for himself.

"Jack, let me see." He well knew his habit of downplaying an injury, especially a serious one; he had been accused of doing the same thing himself. He pushed Jack's hands out of the way and lifted up his shirt to reveal the patch-job that he had done using his supplies from the med kit that Mac kept. It was a good job; after all, Jack had plenty of experience in that regard but he still wasn't a doctor. MacGyver removed the bandages and gasped at what he saw.

"This is just a scratch! Jack, my god, who did you piss off this time?"

"Would you believe me if I told you no one?" pain laced his voice, though he tried to conceal it.

"No,"

"Thanks," he groaned facetiously.

"Jack, I've got to clean this," dread filling his gut.

"I already did,"

"No offense bro, but I can do a much better job than slapping a band-aid on it,"

"Fine," Mac had already left to see what supplies he had to work with.

"Try not to bleed on my bed, or you owe me new sheets," he called over his shoulder, his voice echoing through the bathroom. Jack raised his head just enough to see his side,

"Oops. Hey, none of that bubbly stuff. It hurts like hell!" 'Like a stab wound doesn't?' Mac thought after he heard his brother's call. Jack listened to him puttering about while he took account, for the first time since this fiasco began, how he really felt. His side really hurt now. He had pretty much collapsed earlier when he was wrapping his wound when the adrenaline had abruptly and completely left his system. He had been able to ignore it right up until that point; luckily that was when Mac had arrived. Thinking of Mac, he returned at that precise moment his hands filled with various medical materials and interrupted his silent recollections.

He walked up to Jack and peeled back his bandages to once again reveal a jagged incision about five inches long. He winced at the sight; it was already inflamed and looked really angry. 'Where to start?' he sighed.

"This is gonna hurt."

"I know. Believe me, I know." He hissed with pain as MacGyver started cleaning. Mac stopped, however, when he felt something that he knew didn't belong. Bile threatened to rise as he recognized what it was.

"Jesus Jack! Part of the blade's still in there!" He felt like he was going to be sick, but he knew that he had to finish, for Jack's sake, or else things were going to get a LOT worse. He considered himself an optimist, and it never failed to shock him how cruel and cold some people were, even though he had met many over the years. It still made him ill. But, the damn thing had to come out. "I'm so sorry Jack. So sorry…" He was tearing at the knowledge that what he was about to do would hurt his brother more than it did when those bastards had done this to him in the first place.

"S' okay Mac," He knew what was going through Mac's head, and he didn't need their weird connection to know it either, it was obvious in his eyes. Contrary to what Mac thought, Jack knew that in the next few moments: the one who was going to hurt the most out of the two of them would not be himself, but MacGyver. "Do what you have to do."

In response, Mac's fingers reached in to try and grab the lodged piece of metal stuck inside of him. The pain was excruciating, and he clenched his jaw as hard as he could to keep from screaming, only a few grunts escaped his throat. Mac tried to be quick about it, but because of the blood, he couldn't get a lasting grip. It kept slipping. The pain was starting to overload his senses, but he stubbornly remained quiet until:

"GOD DAMMIT! JUST GET IT-"

"Out!" Mac let out a cry of success.

With enough energy for only a few more seconds of alertness, Jack resolved to reassure his younger sibling that he had done well,

"Good…"

Then everything went black.

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Any theories? Feedback please. I want to know what ya'll think.


	3. Chapter 3

_Authors Note:_ This is a really short chpater telling about what's going on back home, just to let you know that they do not know where Jack is and are searching for him. SG-1 aren't going to leave him hanging.

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_/Meanwhile at the SGC/_

"Major, any progress in locating the whereabouts of Colonel O'Neill?" General Hammond once again asked the said colonel's 2IC. It had been two days since he had disappeared. When SG-1 had shown up at his office, concerned that something had happened to him, he sent two security teams to his house. They had found it in shambles, with a couple windows shattered, furniture overturned and broken into several pieces, and several personal items strewn across the floor, but what most concerned him were several different bloodstains on the wall, floor, and front door and handle. It was obvious that there had been a struggle, but when the blood results came back, none of them matched Colonel O'Neill. They had corresponded with several shady characters known to the FBI and CIA as hit men who were currently under investigation. O'Neill had vanished without a trace.

"No sir," she was obviously strained, his whole team was. They were worried sick that he had been captured right under their noses, and the fact that they had absolutely no leads in the search.

Daniel kept saying how he couldn't believe it. They were fighting a war off-world, but when they stepped back through the gate to earth, they were supposed to be safe. He knew that the colonel had pissed off a lot of people, but he couldn't imagine who would be stupid enough to take out one of the most important soldiers who were fighting for their safety and right to exist.

"Okay people, get yourselves some rest. You won't do Colonel O'Neill any good if you burn out when he needs you most. Tomorrow, we'll make a fresh start." A round of yes sirs and a nod from Teal'c followed as they filed out of the room.

"We will find him. I am certain of it," Teal'c tried to reassure SG-1's two scientists. They were all tired after trying to come up with a _very_ long, and incomplete, list of who the colonel made enemies of. There really wasn't much they could do. It was all so sudden and there were far more questions than answers at that point.

The General let out a sigh, then got up and went to sit behind his desk in his office. He'd be damned if he was going to lose one of the finest officers he'd ever met and had the pleasure to command. He picked up his phone and started to place a few phone calls.

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I'm sorry guys, I am going through a really tough time right now in my life. Everything is going wrong for me so it will be a little while before the next update. I'm sorry.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's Note: _thanks to all of you who gave me some kind words of support. I really appreciate it. This one's for all of you. You know who I'm talkin' about.

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A groan alerted Mac that his guest was awake. He had been both worried and relieved when Jack had passed out. The sight of his eyes rolling into the back of his head, revealing only white where brown had once been had immediately overcome his short lived feeling of triumph. But once rationale had kicked in, he was grateful because that meant that he wouldn't feel any more pain while he was out. He had cleaned and re-bandaged his wound and started to wonder when he would wake. He didn't have to wait long.

"Did they catch him?" Jack ached all over, but the worst pain was coming from his side, which was throbbing in time to his fast-paced heartbeat. He put a hand over his faced and rubbed his eyes. He could feel a bad headache on the horizon.

"Huh?"

"The idiot that ran me over."

Mac had to let a snort out at that one. 'Figures; the first thing out of his mouth was a joke,' God how he had missed him. 'Oh well, might as well play along.'

"Yeah Jack, they got 'em."

"Good," he sat up now, and dropped his arm, "Thanks Mac, I really appreciate it." He looked MacGyver in the eye and stood up.

"Uh…Jack, I don't really think you should be getting up so soon after-"

"I was stabbed in my side, not my leg. I can still walk. Besides, I wanted to give my little brother a proper hello." O'Neill made his way over to where MacGyver was resting against a bureau. He paused right in front of him and placed his hands on the other man's shoulders. His eyes ran up and down, cataloguing every little thing that was different since the last time they saw each other.

Mac's gaze, however, was riveted to Jack's chest, that is, the part that was visible over the bandages.

After a second or so, Jack abruptly pulled Mac into a strong hug. He was relieved at what he saw, 'No recent or healing injuries, not much change actually except the hair is a tad shorter and lighter. The extra inches probably hide _his _gray underneath. Lucky SOB.'

"You've picked up quite a collection of new scars Jack," Mac was of course curious about what he did for a living now a days, but he wasn't so stupid to know that whatever it was was extremely dangerous, and probably at times very painful. That made him concerned for his brother's welfare because Jack most likely wouldn't. He always put everyone else before him and at times, it pissed him off. Knowing Jack, though, it was going to be- there's that word again- classified, six ways from Sunday.

"Work," was his one word reply. He tried to brush off the remark because if allowed to question further, Mac would have to realize that there was no way he could get that hurt working on Deep Space Radar Telemetry, no matter how many training accidents he was in. His cover story would be blown to smithereens, and there was no way he could know about the Stargate no matter how badly he wanted to tell him. He had to shoot him down early; besides he had more important things on his mind, like what had brought him there in the first place,

"God it's good to see you." He still hadn't let go.

What was that he heard in his brother's voice? Mac's uneasiness rose. He heard many emotions tangled together in that one statement. There was the obvious longing, but once he sifted through that, he realized something else. Lying hidden in the undertones was relief, anxiety, and worry. Many questions formed in his mind: What was wrong; why is he worried; and the ever important, what is he really doing here?

"Me too. Jack…what's wrong?" This he asked while he pushed his twin brother back, and looked him in the eye to get a straight answer from him. But Jack wouldn't meet his eye. In fact his gaze was glued to floor and wouldn't budge.

"Where were you this week?" 'Great,' Mac thought, 'He's changing the subject. Not this time.'

"Jack I asked you-"

"Mac, this is important!" Now he looked up into Mac's eyes. Brown met brown, and after a moment's hesitation where Mac could see their solemnity he answered,

"It wasn't anything dangerous if that's what you're asking," Jack gave him a silent look that, although he was relieved, told him to quit stalling and get on with it. "Pete and I were asked to investigate a senator who was getting campaign funds from some shady people. He was raising a lot of suspicions by some good friends of mine, and they didn't trust him."

"You were in D.C.?" His surprise was evident.

"Yeah… that's where a majority of senators usually are." Mac knew something was up when Jack ignored the tease to respond with more questions,

"But you were okay right? None of those shady people came after you? Nothing suspicious? You weren't hurt, attacked, threatened, ambushed-"

"Jack, I'm fine. What's gotten into you? Nothing happened, Pete and I are fine." Jack sighed with obvious relief and turned to sit back down on the bed. His brother followed, not planning on leaving him alone until he knew what had gotten him into such a stir. There weren't many things on this earth that could upset Jack O'Neill or make him nervous, but it was obvious that something had. "Jack, tell me. What's wrong?"

"About a week ago, I was sent to D.C. for a meeting with…some people,"  
Jack was in D.C.? And he didn't notice? Their connection must have been getting a little rusty. Mac shook his head softly, well aware of all the things that could have possibly gone wrong with the two twins in the same city. "But that's not important. While I was there, I had noticed that I had picked up a tail. They didn't try anything while I was there, but they had followed me back home. I wasn't expecting them to, and they ambushed me in my home about," He looked outside the window and saw that it was now dark, "three days ago."

"Jack, that wound is not three days old."

"Are you going to let me tell the story or not?" He gave Mac a pointed look.

"Sure thing, go ahead, sorry."

"I'm at my house and three guys tried to get the drop on me."

"And you took 'em out…" he knew that no one was better at doing what he did than Jack, as cruel as it sounded, it was something he was used to.

"Naw, they were smarter than I'd give them credit for. They had someone waiting in a car and the cowards left before I could finish."

"Okay, but Jack I don't get it. _Why _are you _here_?"

He directed at Mac a gaze that paralleled the worried tones in his voice,

"Because they weren't after _me _Mac…they were after _you._" That stunned him into silence.

"Wha…wha…" he tried again, "What? How do you know?"

"Because, last time I checked, my name wasn't MacGyver."

"Huh?"

"When they attacked me, they called me MacGyver."

"Do you know who sent them?"

"Would I be here if I did?" That made him think a second. Jack would have most likely taken care of the threat without even telling him, and then have been on his merry way.

"No. So, what happened?"

"They got away, but I wasn't dead. MacGyver wasn't dead. They were hit men; they don't get paid until the job's done, and I don't want them to succeed in their job."

"What about afterwards. How did you get that?" he asked while gesturing towards the white bandages wrapped around jack's torso.

"This? Umm… well, I came here and staked out your place, but you weren't home." Thinking back on it, he was really stupid. 'They had mistaken you for MacGyver because you're his nonexistent twin brother, and you show up at his home, where the hit men will eventually turn up looking to kill the man that you resemble. Smart O'Neill.' It wasn't the most intelligent thing he had ever done, but he was worried about Mac and the only thing he was thinking about at the time was making sure that his little brother was safe. "Well, I wasn't careful enough and got ambushed."

"How many?" Mac knew that to overpower his brother there needed to be many baddies involved, or they had to be extremely skilled, or he was distracted, big time.

"Umm… six, but a few won't ever get up." Though he didn't enjoy killing, it was better for him to do it to them _before_ they killed him, or worse, Mac.

"And then I came home…" He finished the story.

"Yep. Great timing by the way," he held up his index finger and thumb an inch apart, "You came this close to walking in on me breaking and entering."

"God, that would have given Pete a heart attack."

"Yeah? What about me?" They both chuckled. Jack was only six minutes older, but Mac was always teasing him about getting old, and occasionally he would give in and play along. That set off a memory for Jack from when he was growing up: they would spend their summers together, where the family that adopted him, the O'Neill's, would dump him with the MacGyver's. One time, to humor Mac, he had picked up a stick and bent over, using it as a cane. He had mimicked an old man's voice and had even called Mac "sonny". He snorted and, seeing Mac's curious expression, asked him if he remembered it.

Their minds currently occupied with a new train of thought, they momentarily forgot the danger that had caused this reunion. They spent the time reminiscing about funny stories and old times. Laughter filled the upstairs bedroom of the houseboat until Mac noticed that Jack was starting to droop and slow down, then he realized the time.

"It's late, and you're injured and you need your rest. We've both had a long, eventful day." He got up off the bed and headed towards his closet. "I'm guessing you didn't have time to pack?"

"Naw…_(yawn)…_I was in a little bit of a hurry."

"That's okay, you can borrow some of my clothes for now."

"Ah, the advantages of having an identical twin: You're always just-my-size."

"Shut your trap, and put this on. I'll not have you wearing that bloody rag you call a shirt in my house, or around me. You'll make me look bad." He tossed him a shirt and a pair of sweats; they'll worry about other clothes tomorrow, after a good night's rest.

"Hey," he protested, "I'll have you know, this used to be my favorite shirt!"

"Used to be,"

"Smart ass!" Jack threw one of the pillows he was resting on at Mac, messing up his hair in the process.

"Look who's talking!" Mac threw it right back.

"Yeahsureyabetcha." Jack grinned, despite the twinge of pain he felt in his side. He really shouldn't have thrown the darn pillow, but it reassured his brother that he was fine, which he was.

"Good night."

"Night bro."

Mac headed down the stairs to the couch. He was happy that he got to see his brother. He had really missed him; he just wished that the visit could have been under better circumstances. But he was exhausted. Spending a week in DC tailing, and investigating some pompous jerk of a senator was not his idea of a week well spent. It was thus his mind was occupied when he slipped into a deep sleep. It was so deep that he didn't hear the phone ringing. A little red light started to blink, alerting the owner of the machine that he had a new message; just no one was awake to see it.

After leaving his message, Pete sighed and hung up. 'Oh well, I guess I'll go home. No use in waking Mac up when I can spend the night in my own bed.' The original plan was that Pete would spend the night at Mac's while they stayed up, discussing the details of their investigation. They had dug up a lot of dirt and they wanted everything sorted and organized before they handed in their findings. But, since he had been stuck until late, or more accurately, early, working on paperwork for Phoenix, he was going to home. He would stop over at Mac's early in the morning to pick up his stuff. They could talk then. No biggie. Mac wasn't doing anything that he knew of, and would probably enjoy the company.

Pete yawned, 'Yep, that's what I'll do,' he resolved, 'First thing in the morning tomorrow.'

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Okay, the usual: The reviews really make me feel good, so the more I get, the faster the next part comes out. Come on, let me know what ya'll think.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: Sorry it took so long, but the Documents page has been down for almost two days, so I couldn't update, but, It's back up and running now, so on with the show...story. Just a short chapter, but I'm working hard.

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His face was practically crimson with anger, and Hyse could tell even through the phone lines.

"What do you mean he got away? What the hell am I paying you idiots for?"  
"We didn't have an opening in the city; he was surrounded by people the whole time. I'm not going to risk my ass getting caught by a crowd of witnesses. We followed him out of the city to some house in Colorado and tried to finish it there." Hyse wasn't stupid, just cautious.

"But there's only ONE OF HIM! You couldn't take out some tree hugging hippy with all the people and resources at your disposal?"

"Our Intel you gave us was faulty! He pulled a gun and fought back…hard, he was well-trained for a civilian."

"And so like cowards, you ran!"

"This is my show! You don't like it; piss off, this means nothing to me. There are plenty of other people who need obstacles removed for the right price."

"Fine," he was pissed at the necessity of dealing with these men, but he was desperate. They had come with high recommendations for never leaving a job undone, and they didn't ask too many questions, which could be disastrous for a man in his position.

"We caught up with him again around the marina…" One thing Hyse hated was failure, and it was embarrassing to admit to his employer that his target had not only eluded them again, but he took a heavy toll.

"And? Did you get him?"

"Well, sort of. We beat him up a little, but we took casualties. I lost three of my men. But, he's injured." Sure he was upset that some of his men were dead, but they were easily replaced. What made him angry was bad Intel. He had been told by his employer, who had heard the info second-hand, that MacGyver was a peace-loving optimist and abhorred violence. It made his job simpler because that meant that he wouldn't fight back, and it would be easy money. But the pompous ass had been wrong, he had fought back, and his men weren't prepared for someone to pull a gun on them. That surprise had made for disastrous results.

"Well, you know where he lives. Go kill him." Hyse rolled his eyes at his employer's naiveté.

"It doesn't work like that, these things take organization. We were already surprised on a couple counts. I don't want to get my ass throne in jail because I rushed in."

"Well, I want to be sure it gets done, that's what I'm paying you for," said the weasely voice, "Just kill him." Then the phone connection cut off.

Hyse rolled his eyes. The sooner this job was over, the better. He amused himself with the thought of killing his employer the minute he forked over the money. 'It would rid the world of one more power hungry, arrogant ass hole,' He thought to himself. Then he walked back inside the motel room he was staying at with the remaining two men of his group, he had an annoying man to kill.

Meanwhile the employer had hung up the phone outraged. This MacGyver was dangerous to him. If word got out… he would be ruined. He had to be stopped. While he was dwelling on the thought of eliminating people who were dangerous or annoying, his mind supplied him with another name. One other man that had single handedly pissed him off more than anyone else had. One man who remained in power, and all his efforts to remove him had backfired tremendously. One man who he hated more than anyone.

Maybe it was time to dirty his hands even more, after all, it would be for the greater good, 'my greater good,' He thought. Even though he hated dealing with these lowlifes, he would put up with them for a little while longer if it meant getting rid of Jack O'Neill, the constant thorn in his side.

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I'm flying to florida this weekend, hopefully I'll get a lot of writing done on the plane to make up for my 'play time'. Wish me luck at the airports. Keep those reviews coming! Tell me what you like, what you don't, what you might want to see happen, or if you think you know who the bad guy(s) is/are. Your words keep me going!


	6. Chapter 6

_Author's Note:_ Just a quick, funny thing, I'm writing this in Word before I upload it, and I have this little animated paperclip at the top of my screen, and the irony just hit me. Those of ya'll who are MacGyver fans will get what I'm talking about. : )

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The sun streaming through his window was enough to wake him. Jack had never been big on sleep, and he was by habit an early riser. Years of being in the military will do that to you. He sat up and passed a hand over his face, rubbing at his eyes a little to remove the remaining deposit of sleep. He looked out by the bedside table hoping to see a clock so he would know what time it was, but what he saw made him smile. It was a picture, or to be honest, two. There was one of himself, and one of Mac's grandfather, Harry, and although he wasn't technically either of their grandfathers, they both considered him one. Their family history was a little bit sad, but they had both found a way around it. When they were born, their mom died in childbirth, she was the only one who knew who the father was but he had run away shortly after finding out she was pregnant.

The MacGyver family had happened upon them, and adopted Mac. They had wanted to adopt Jack as well, but for some reason he never knew, they couldn't. He had, not too long after, been sent as a foster child to the O'Neill family, who were just one of many flaws in the whole system: they had only taken him for the money that came with him for childcare. His 'dad' was abusive, especially when he got drunk, but his 'mom' wasn't a bad person. She didn't treat him awfully, she just didn't stand up for him, which he now knew was because she was scared of her husband.

Growing up, he knew that they weren't his blood family; he had known he had a twin brother, Mac. Every year, when school was out he'd convince the O'Neill's to let him leave for Minnesota for the summer, so they would be rid of him. Those were his favorite times growing up, when he could visit Mac. Harry had taught them how to fish, play hockey, ice skate and a whole bunch of things about the wilderness and life in general. He had stayed with the O'Neill's, not like he had a choice, long enough that he eventually took their name, and while he was eight years old, they finally had a child of their own. A little girl, and by affiliation: his little sister. He had sworn that she would not be treated the way he had, and he made it his mission to protect her from her father's wrath. One of many failures.

He shook his head to clear his mind from its current train of thought. It was not something pleasant, and he didn't want to dwell on the pain of the past while he should be looking out for possible dangers of the future. The clock stated that it was six-thirty, too early for MacGyver to be up. Jack, though, was hungry and in need of a good cup of coffee. Man, he hadn't eaten since…damn, last morning.

He threw the sheets back and climbed out of bed, careful not to aggravate his injured side. He could go get it stitched up properly once this whole mess was cleared up. He couldn't risk Mac taking him to the hospital; too many questions that he didn't want to have to answer. His bare feet were quiet against the cool wooden steps and when he reached the bottom, he stretched a little bit to loosen up his muscles that had been in a constant state of tenseness for the past few days. He walked silently to the kitchen, careful not to wake Mac, and looked for some coffee until he remembered something: Mac didn't drink coffee. But that didn't stop him from his search; he knew that Mac was too gracious of a host to not have some for his guests even if he didn't drink it himself. It was another thing they shared, for he did that as well for his team. Daniel liked a certain special Starbucks blend of coffee while Jack was fine settling for the damn instant crap, but he still kept some in his kitchen for the not so odd occasion when he spent the night, and Carter liked diet soda, so he kept some in his fridge just for her when he was fine with beer. It was something you did when you were that close with your friends.

He finally found a percolator in the back of one of the lower cabinets along with a small packet of coffee grounds. 'There we go, problem solved.' It wasn't long before he had made himself a cup full of the steaming beverage. He headed over to the table and moved a chair so he could look out the window while still being able to keep an eye on Mac. He took a sip and could feel the heat sliding down his throat to settle in his stomach, warming him from the inside out.

It had been a spontaneous decision to come out here, but one made of necessity. There was no way he could have ignored such an obvious threat to MacGyver's life. He knew that he was practically AWOL, hell he was _definitely_ AWOL, but it didn't matter to him. What mattered was the safety of the only family he had left, and that was more important than his career in the military. He took another long sip from his mug, before he noticed the design of it.

It was navy blue and had an Air Force logo on it. He snorted from amusement. He hadn't known that Mac had it; of course what new mug they had just bought that week never was the center of any of their conversations. He realized that Mac must have really missed him and bought it as a reminder of him. Then the look of amusement he had on his face softened into one of melancholy. He put the cup down and stared at Mac, wondering what could have been if he had decided early on that his brother was more significant to him than being in black ops. In retrospect, he knew that he would have changed it in an instant, he would have much preferred having a normal relationship with his brother, who was like his other half, than suffer the pain and torment of his secretive missions; but hindsight was 20:20.

His stomach growled, interrupting his sad musings. He wandered over to the fridge, no longer wishing to dwell on could-a, would-a, should-a's, and peered in, hoping to spot something other than yogurt that he could make for breakfast. Specifically, he had a craving for something hearty like bacon and eggs, but he knew Mac wouldn't have bacon, but he did have eggs. 'That's a start. Maybe I can make an omelet,' he decided, and pulled out all the necessary ingredients. Despite what his team thought, he was an excellent cook; he just didn't like many people to know.

A short while later, the smell of something wonderful cooking woke Mac up. But he was momentarily confused, he never was that good at waking up, who was cooking? This was his house wasn't it? His curiosity got the best of him as he decided that there was no way he was going to go back to sleep now that he had a problem to solve. He peeked his head just high enough to see over the couch to see who was cooking in _his_ kitchen.

Jack had seen the movement from the other side of the room and smiled at the image of Mac looking pretty much like he did when he was a young kid. He was always slow in the morning, unlike Jack, and took a little while to wake up.

"Morning Mac! I made ya breakfast," he greeted with a smile that grew into a grin as he saw a look of confusion spread across his brother's face.

"Jack? What are _you _doing here?" then all the memories of the other day came rushing back to him, effectively waking him up. He straightened quickly and jumped off the couch, rushing to the stove where Jack was currently making an omelet. "Are you okay? How'd you sleep? Is your side still hurting you? I can give you another pain med-"

"Mac! Enough! I'm _fine_. I've had much worse before, it's already well on its way to being healed." Mac looked skeptical at the 'almost healed' bit, but he did know that he had had much worse, and was still alive, so he conceded,

"Okay…but take a Tylenol, it must be aching a little bit," a sort pause, "So, breakfast huh?"

"Fine, yeah, omelets. You didn't have any bacon," Mac snorted at that. Of course he didn't have bacon; he was a vegetarian. Jack slid the breakfast onto a plate and handed it to Mac, "Voila! Breakfast is served," he said in a horribly fake French accent, "I already ate, so I'll go take that Tylenol now."

"What, you're running away after giving me food? What did you do?" He picked up the plate and held it at eye level, mockingly searching for any conspicuous signs of poison.

"Noooooothing," he tossed over his shoulder in a voice laced with fake innocence, already heading upstairs.

"Yeahsureyabetcha," Mac grumbled to himself as he took a bite. By the time Jack returned downstairs, he had finished his morning meal, and started cleaning up the kitchen. He filled the sink with warm soapy water and was about to begin the dishes when Jack shooed him out of the way.

"Mac, I made the mess, I clean it up."

"Jack, don't give me that, you're my guest, besides, you're injured."

"Will you stop it with that, I'm fine! You fixed me up last night, it's the least I could do. Why don't you go upstairs and get dressed while I finish down here. When you're done, I'll go up and change into whatever clothes you've left over. Then we need to talk about what's going on."

After a moment's hesitation, he conceded,

"Alright bro, I'll be right back. You sure you're okay though?" Mac wanted to be sure before he left, though he was only going upstairs. What could possibly go wrong in the little time it took to get dressed? Jack fixed Mac with a look that plainly said, 'quite asking me if I'm fine, for crying out loud!' With that, MacGyver retreated.

Jack let out a sigh of aggravation and turned around, emerging his hands in the soapy water, already beginning his task. He was placing a glass that he had just finished washing in a drip-dry rack when he noticed movement at the door. He turned his head and crouched low, just in case the newcomer was a threat. He wished he had his gun with him right then, but he had left it upstairs on the bureau. 'Shit. That was really smart O'Neill, you should have known better!' The door opened, and someone walked in. The footsteps didn't sound right, they weren't the soft cautious sound someone made when they were trying to sneak around, they were heavy, unguarded steps, which confused him.

"Mac? Ya down here?" He definitely didn't sound like an assassin, more like one of Mac's friends. Jack knew he couldn't stay hiding for long; sooner or later he was going to spot him. 'Oh well,' he decided, he could be Mac. His hair was different, but he could just say he got a haircut. He stood up to greet the guy,

"Hey…" His mind worked quickly to supply the name to face he was seeing, The man in front of him was on the sort side, chubby, and had an almost completely bald head, "Pete. What brings you by?"

"Mac? What were ya doing on the floor? And, whoa! What'd ya do to your hair?"

"Oh uh, I dropped a dishrag. My hair? I got a haircut." That was easy.

"Finally! But now you look old…er" Jack scowled at that. He wasn't that old! He was just gray because Daniel was always scaring the shit out of him. "Anyway, I came to pick up my stuff I left here last night, we could also discuss the case now because it was too late by the time I left the Foundation. I left a message on the machine." Jack's eyes wandered to the answering machine and, for the first time, noticed that indeed, the little red light was blinking.

"Oh-"

"Hey Jack, I put out some clothes for you on the bed that you could wear. Oh, don't leave your gun lying around, you know how I feel about those things!" Both Pete and Jack turned towards the stairs where Mac was descending. Jack stood sputtering like a guppy, not knowing what to do. The situation had just past the point of no return and he knew it.

"MacGyver," Pete was pointing at the second person he thought was Mac, completely confused. He then turned and pointed at Jack, Mac # 1, to make sure his mind was playing tricks on him, but there really was two MacGyvers, "and…MacGyver?" Just then, Mac looked up, realizing that they had company. He stood staring at Pete who was shocked speechless after his initial reaction. He unwittingly was sharing the same expression as his twin older brother. The two look-alikes then turned towards each other at the same time, trying to seek advice from the other. Neither knew what to do.

"Oh crap!"


	7. Chapter 7

How the hell did he find himself in this position? He had left for no more than a few minutes but returned to find that his biggest secret, and probably the most important, had been blown. He had forgotten about Pete. He looked over at Jack, silently asking for forgiveness.

Jack knew Pete, or at least he felt like he did from all the stories that he had been told, and he knew that he was a man who could be trusted. He returned Mac's look with one of his own. After all, what choice did they have? MacGyver saw the resignation and reassurance on his brother's face and proceeded to explain to Pete an aspect of his life that no one had ever been allowed to know.

Peter Thornton, ex DXS agent, current Director of Operations at the Phoenix Foundation, and best friend to MacGyver was stunned. Here he had thought that he knew everything there was to know about his above said friend, including the fact that he had no living relatives, but what he was telling him know meant that that wasn't true. Mac had lied to him. Staring at him in the face, in flesh and blood, was living proof: A brother, a _twin_ brother. Sure, he understood the need for secrecy. Mac had told him about their career choices and why they made it a secret, and it was sad, really, but he thought Mac had trusted him enough to keep a secret, especially one that hurt Mac so much to keep. Obviously, he was wrong, and that hurt him deeper than he thought anything ever could have.

"Pete, you understand why I couldn't tell you?" He knew, he understood, but it still hurt. Though, Mac's reasoning was getting through.

"Yeah…" but….

"It could have put both our lives in danger, and it wasn't my place to tell." Damn him, he was trying to be angry, but he couldn't. Not at Mac.

Jack had stayed uncharacteristically quiet, letting Mac speak with his friend, but he knew when to step in,

"Look, Mr. Thornton-"

"Pete, please." Mr. Thornton made him sound old.

"Okay. Look Pete, you're Mac's best friend. He's told me a lot about you. I know what kind of a person you are: a good one. I know that you're not one to put those he cares about in unnecessary danger if you could help it. If you could protect someone close to you by keeping a secret, you would keep it. Well, that's what Mac and I did. If people knew about our relationship, not only would it put _us_ in danger, but the people who know as well. Mac was protecting you _and_ me, don't get mad at him for that."

Crap, his brother was just as good at smoothing him over, as Mac was himself. There was no way he could be mad at any of them, and the pain was quickly being replaced with understanding. Both brothers sighed in relief as the obvious emotions filtered across his face. Mac really didn't think he could stand it if Pete never forgave him.

"So… twins huh?" They both broke out into grins at Pete's acceptance, and answered together,

"Yup." Pete laughed at that, glad that the mood was lightening.

"Well, I did come over to talk details with you, but seeing as you've got rare company, I'll leave,"

"Pete, don't even think about it," Jack warned, "Don't let me interrupt your work. Besides, I still haven't finished the dishes."

"You don't mind Jack?" Mac asked. He knew the case was important, but Jack was even more important, they barely saw each other and he felt that it would be encroaching on their time together if he spent it working. Jack shook his head in the negative,

"Naw, fine with me. Hey, maybe I can even help. Who knows?" he shrugged.

Sometimes, he knew, it helped to talk things through with an outsider; they asked questions that made you think, and they were a fresh mind. He also had a knack for seeing things at their simplest, and mentioning probable solutions that others haven't even considered, like the vacuum cleaner needing to be plugged in, not taken apart, or replacing the batteries in a remote, instead of checking the circuitry for a malfunction.

"Great, I'll go get my notes. Thanks Jack," with that he left and quickly headed back upstairs.

"_Colonel_ O'Neill… Air Force?"

"Yes sir."

"Pete, I told you."

"Then, yes Pete sir," he said with a grin.

'Smart ass' Pete rolled his eyes. Mac sometimes got like this, and when he did, there was no speaking to him! Maybe this was where he got if from, 'cause it seemed like Jack O'Neill was filled with sarcasm and smart-ass remarks. He looked at Jack carefully for the first time, and realized that when you knew who it was, there _were_ subtle differences, like Jack had his left eyebrow split by a scar where the hair hadn't grown back. The most obvious difference though, was the hair. Jack's was shorter and was well into the stages of turning gray, while Mac's was still a very light blonde. He also realized that the picture he had asked Mac about yesterday had actually been of Jack, not Mac. 'That explains his reaction.' Pete was curious to know more about Mac's enigma of a brother.

"Where are you stationed?" 'Didn't take long for him to start asking questions. Oh well, _that's_ not Top Secret information, but still…'

"Colorado Springs."

"Yeah?" Then silence. How were you to respond to that? He obviously didn't want to give personal info. Pete didn't know how to continue the conversation, so he sat quietly, hoping for Mac to come back down soon. Jack preferred the silence to questions, no matter how innocent they seemed. Pete was smart and wouldn't buy the cover story if he asked him what he _did_ for the Air Force. For him, questions were dangerous. But thankfully, Pete changed the topic of conversation to something he knew would be amusing for the both of them, "What was Mac like as a kid? Anything embarrassing? Baby blanket? Played with dolls? Parents dressed him like a girl?" A mischievous glint appeared in Jack's eyes as he recalled the perfect event to tell Pete.

"Where do I start? There was this one time when we were about, oh, seven where he-"

"DON'T YOU DARE JONATHON!"

Mac came bounding down the stairs, taking them two at a time, knowing the story that Jack had chosen. Jack schooled his face into one of absolute innocence.

"What?"

'Man, what horrible timing,' Pete thought. He was trying extremely hard not to crack up. He had never seen Mac like that before; he was completely different around his brother, more relaxed and at ease. 'Oh well, I'll ask Jack to tell me later.'

"Just…go do the dishes."

"On my way," and he did just that.

He returned to the kitchen to finish the task that was interrupted. Though right before he reached the sink, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up on their ends. Something was wrong. His instincts were always right, and had saved his life and his team's on many occasions. He could hear Mac and Pete discussing their case, but he didn't really hear what they were talking about, he only heard their voices. Jack quickly turned and headed upstairs to retrieve his Beretta. He knew that Mac abhorred them, but he felt naked without one. He searched around and found it right where he left it on the bureau, but it was in pieces.

"God dammit Mac!"

He knew that disabling his weapon was safer when not in use, but he needed it. Thank god he could put it together in only a few seconds, even while blindfolded, so he gathered all the parts and was assembling it as he descended. His hasty retreat had not gone unnoticed. Mac had stop his conversation with Pete, and stood up.

"Jack, what is it?" he asked as Jack came down the stairs. He knew something was wrong only because Jack knew it. He was in tuned most of the time with Jack's emotions, and always had been as a kid ever since their joint near death experience. Jack always knew when trouble was coming, kinda like a sixth sense. It had come in handy many times, but it always meant that things were going to get really bad.

"I don't know," he slapped in the clip after he made sure it was a full one, "Get Pete and go out the back." He had moved towards the wall, right beside the door and window and looked out, trying to spot the threat his instincts were warning him about. He didn't immediately see anything, but that didn't mean that there was nothing there.

"I'm not leaving Jack," he should have known that.

"Me neither," Pete agreed. If only he had _his_ gun. He didn't share Mac's aversion to firearms. He was, at the moment, useless, but that didn't mean that he was going to run like a coward.

"Mac don't argue with me, neither of you can help. Neither of you have a weapon, and this is my only one. This is going to happen real fast, no time for one of your creations."

He really didn't feel like arguing. He knew that the people who were coming were going to have guns, and despite what he thought, Mac wasn't bulletproof. He didn't want to risk having Mac there when all hell broke loose, not that he didn't trust his brother, he trusted him with his life. There wasn't anybody he wanted at his back more than his brother; it's just that he didn't want to risk losing him if he wasn't going to do any good.

"I'm not one of your soldiers, you can't order me around. I'm staying."

Jack paused and turned to look at him, he reminded Jack so much of Daniel just then: never following orders. Maybe it was his fault that no one listened to him? He could reanalyze his leadership skills afterwards; right now he had to protect his family.

"Mac, god dammit," he looked around, "get behind the counter at least, for cryin ou- MAC GET DOWN!"

He saw it happen as if in slow motion. He saw a man stand up and, peering through the site of a rifle, fire. He both heard the shot, after all, he _was_ waiting for it, and he saw it. Mac hadn't, he was standing in the middle of the room, focused on convincing Jack to let him stay. Jack had no control over the situation, something he really hated. He let out a couple of rounds through the window, pure reaction, and threw himself at Mac. He felt the projectile hit him in the thigh, put it didn't go through his body like a normal sniper bullet would, one that was designed to kill. This barely even hurt. The impact had jarred his injured side and sent a wave of pain throughout his body, put he quickly shoved it aside, he had more important things to deal with. He rolled off of Mac and reached behind his butt to the back of his leg and pulled whatever it was out.

"What the hell?" It wasn't a bullet; it was a dart, a tranquilizer dart, "Oh shit."

He could already feel it working, the toxin spreading through out his veins quicker than normal, because his heart was pumping faster out of his anticipation of battle. Except this was no battle, it was an ambush. "Mac you neeeed ta get ouuuta heeer." His words were already slurring. Shit, it was powerful stuff; he normally didn't go down that quick. He turned towards the window, aware of the fact that Mac was starting to drag him away from it. He emptied his clip through the door, once again hoping to get lucky, because there was no way in hell he could hit his target because he was aiming at it, if he did hit something, it was by pure chance. He didn't even think of innocents getting caught in the crossfire. He just didn't want to be caught himself. He did however feel triumphant when he heard a cry of pain, meaning that one of his bullets had found its mark. 'Well, at least that's one less,' he couldn't even say it, he was too drugged. He could feel his consciousness slipping. He tried to call out to Mac to tell him not to forget to duck, but he succumbed to the tranquilizer serum that was coursing through his system.

"Pete, go out the back. Quickly! Hide in the next boat over, it's empty. If I don't make it with Jack, you've got to tell someone what happened. Tell Murphy, tell her whatever you have to, but tell someone."

"Mac-"

"Go Pete, I'll be right behind you."

And he was, right up until he got shot as well. Pete had already made it to the boat, but Jack was a dead weight, and he had more ground to cover. He was on his hands and knees pulling him by the shirt collar, not able to carry him in a fireman's carry because that meant standing up and putting themselves in the line of fire. He wasn't that stupid. Jack's Beretta's clip was now empty and useless, not that he would have shot it anyway. But Jack was right, he didn't have time to try and slow their pursuers down, he could only try and run.

"Man, you gotta lose some weight bro. You've been eating way too many pies." He had almost made it out the back, when the front door flew off its hinges and splintered into hundreds of little pieces. Two guys dressed in cliché style black stood in the doorway, pointing guns at him. He heard the thud as the dart exploded out of the barrel to burry itself in his neck. He didn't lose his hold on Jack, but fell to the deck where he was kneeling, his arms splaying out in all different directions. The last thing he heard was the confused voices of their captors,

"What the fuck? Which one do we take?"

"Both, we'll soort oout whooo's whoooo baaaack aaaaaaat-"

Everything seemed to slow down as he joined his brother in oblivion.

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Murphy is a police detective from the MacGyver TV series. She is in narcotics, but she is a friend of Mac's.


	8. Chapter 8

He looked around himself, seeing only black, not that it was dark or anything, there just wasn't anything to see. He did, however, feel that he was in some sort of very large room, it had that stuffiness to it. It was a familiar place, one that could mean good things, or very bad things, he hadn't decided yet.

"Hello?" he yelled at the top of his lungs. Judging by the way his voice echoed, the room must have been equal in size at least to a large concert hall. He slowly turned around, looking for someone, but no one had joined him there yet. "Oh come on, where is he? Did he stop for a potty break or something?"

"Or something." Jack spun around,

"Mac! Where've you been?"

"I was trying to pull your butt to safety, you had to just wait and be patient."

"Did you?" Mac had the grace to look embarrassed,

"No, I got shot," he saw Jack's worried gaze and quickly added, "tranq."

"What about Pete?"

"I'm pretty sure he made it to safety and is hiding right now." Jack let out a sigh of relief.

This type of experience wasn't new to them. It had happened many times over their lives, but never without the other. They were always here together. They had never really figured out where 'here' exactly was, but Mac had come up with a theory that it was a link in their subconscious minds, seeing as, most of the time, they could only get here when one or both was unconscious. It had happened twice before when neither was unconscious, but it was under extreme circumstances.

The last time it had occurred was Iraq, a very dark place indeed. Jack had been ruthlessly and endlessly tortured for four months. Somewhere in the middle of it, he reached out to Mac who dropped everything he was doing and booked the next flight there. Mac was the one who broke him out, saving his life. The story had been that Jack had escaped on his own and was found by a passing troop of soldiers who brought him back to base and sent him to the hospital. Mac had been with him every step of the way, even though they were secretly twins: no one could tell, so there had been no need for hiding. Jack was extremely malnourished, gaunt, and pale, and his face, and rest of his body, was so bloody and dirty it was almost beyond recognition, no one would have guessed they were related, and no one had.

It was a scary time, and they had spent a lot of time in the 'zone' as Jack called it. It was a place beyond pain, where only they existed. It had started at the same time their 'connection' had. It was when they were eight and a half years old, in Minnesota during a rare winter trip where the O'Neill's had dropped Jack off so they could go to Hawaii. Jack and Mac had been sledding a little ways from the cabin. A two-day blizzard had just ended, and powdered the whole area with two feet of new snow. It was too tempting to ignore, so they had woken up early, gotten their toboggan and headed for the hills.

_/flashback/_

"Come on Mac, just a little further." It was Jack's first time ever to experience a blizzard with the MacGyvers. They had stayed up, cuddled in front of the fire as a family and played Parcheesi while drinking hot cocoa. It was so much fun, and Mac had had a fun time just because Jack was, even though he had done it about a gazillion times before, and he was too old to be cuddled by his mom. But Jack had enjoyed it because his parents never showed him affection or spent fun time with him.

Mac had been woken up early by Gilbert, his dog, and when he saw that it had stopped snowing he had woken up Jack, who didn't want to see the snow: he hated snow.

Once he convinced Jack that snow was fun, and no, it wasn't just there to be shoveled by him like his father had said, he become really excited. He had never played in snow or went sledding before, and once Mac found out, they just had to go right then and there!

So, now Jack was pulling the toboggan up the biggest hill he could find, with Mac in tow.

"I'm coming Jack, jeeze! Hold your horses!"

"I'm holding, I promise, but they really want to go!" he held his hands out in front of him, pretending that something was pulling him, "Ack! They're slipping; I can't hold on any longer…I…can't. Oops, sorry Mac, they're gone." Mac was positively cracking up now. Jack could always do that to him. He was the funniest person he ever met, and it made Jack feel good when he made his little brother laugh. After all, it was his job, and he took it _very_ seriously. "Now, hurry up Mac, all the snow will have melted by the time you get up there."

"I am up there Jack, so are you. We're at the top."

"Oh, of course we are." Mac rolled his eyes and tried to suppress a giggle at the goofy look his brother had on his face. "Now, how do you do this again?" Mac's jaw dropped. Jeeze, the guy was eight and he hadn't ever been sledding before? He couldn't believe it; he thought he had been joking before.

"You're serious?" A pained expression crossed Jack's face, but it was quickly replaced by the thrill of learning how to sled.

"Yeah, teach me."

Mac took the string of the toboggan from Jack, and moved it back form the edge of the hill a little bit.

"You sit on it like this, then you scoot over to the edge, pull your feet on, and, well, sled." He sat down on the toboggan in the front, leaving enough room on the back for Jack, so the could both share the ride.

"That's it?"

"Yup"

"How do you steer?"

"Normally you don't, but if there's a rock in your way, you just lean to one side a little. No big deal, just sit, you'll pick it up."

"Sweet!" Jack was really excited. His first toboggan! Man, he was so glad he got to spend Christmas with his brother's family. He was glad to spend anytime with his brother and his family, it meant less time with his own. He sat down behind Mac and grabbed on to the edge.

"Now, don't put your fingers beneath up, it runs on two sharp blades. Bobby Wintermyer, down the street accidentally stuck his finger underneath, and they had to ampilitate the ends of his fingers. It's gross." They both made identical scowls and winces of pain. Jack made a mental note to watch his hands.

"'Kay bro, ready?"

"'Kay. Ready!"

"Steady?"

"Steady!"

"Go?"

"Gone!"

The only part that Mac didn't like was the first second or two, where he saw exactly how high up they were. He was scared of heights, so he closed his eyes, but only for a second, then he opened them. Jack didn't close them at all. He was fine with heights, and he wanted to experience every part of sledding there was. They felt the cold wind sting their eyes, but they didn't care; it was all part of the fun. Jack had indeed found the biggest hill there was; it was more like a mountain.

"Weeeeeeeeeee…" They both let out their own squeals of excitement on the way down, screaming as loud as their young voices could go, which was a big mistake.

Mac had grown up in these mountains, and should have known better.

The heavy blizzard had dumped a lot of loose snow over the mountains, and it was highly unstable. Even the smallest sound could have set off one of the most dangerous things anyone could ever come up against, something that no matter how hard you fought it, it could still overpower you: an avalanche.

The boys' screams were more then enough to start the chain reaction. Loose snow higher above them shifted and fell a few feet. Normally, it cold have been stopped by a few well placed and sturdy trees, but if there were trees on the slope, it wouldn't make for the perfect place for two young brothers to sled.

The moving snow pushed the snow below it, which pushed the snow below it, creating a snowball effect, until a large portion of the mountainside was falling towards its unsuspecting victims.

Mac and Jack were having the times of their lives. Jack was curious about turning and steering, and even though Mac said you couldn't really steer all that well, he tried anyway. He leaned to his right side, and could feel the sled turning, but it was too much, and they tipped over.

"Woah," They crawled out from under the snow that they fell in, and righted the sled, "That was sooo much fun!"

"I know, isn't it?"

"Yeah, thanks Mac for taking me,"

"Don't thank me, we're not even done yet. There still a lot of hill left, and then we come back up and do it again and again and again." The smile on Jack's face grew even larger at the prospect of continued sledding.

"Sweet!" he pumped his arms high into the air. But then he felt weird, he knew something was going to happen, and he asked in a quieter, almost worried voice, "Mac?"

He saw the abrupt change in his brother's mood, and knew what it meant. 'Aw, man!' They were sledding. Couldn't whatever it was wait until they were done. It was Jack's first time, and he didn't want to ruin it. Then he heard it, like thunder rumbling off in the far distance. But it didn't stop, it continued, and grew in magnitude, the sound getting louder, and the ground beginning to shake.

"Jack, get back on the sled! We got to go…NOW!"

Jack did as he was told, not knowing what was going on, but when his brother was like that, he listened. He sat back down on the sled, in the front, and Mac gave them a running push before he got on, this time on the back.

"What is it Mac?" he had to scream over the wind, and the not so distant roar that had the hair on the back of his neck standing on end.

"AVALANCHE!" The word set off a bad feeling that originated deep in his gut. Jack had never been through one, or even seen one before. He'd heard of skiers getting caught and trapped in them before…and dying. Now one was chasing him and his brother. Although he had never been on a toboggan before, he knew all about aerodynamics, he did want to be a pilot after all, so he tucked in his legs as close as he could to try and decrease drag, and Mac did the same. They tried not to look backwards, to see the river of snow gaining on them. They could feel it getting closer, and there was nothing they could do, they were almost at the bottom now, but there was no way they could out run it. They were out of time, and they knew it.

"Mac!"

"Jack!" they both screamed each other's names as the avalanche engulfed them. And jack's last thought was, 'I _really_ hate snow.'

_/end flashback/_

Miraculously, they had both survived. The force of the snow had separated them, but they were never apart. That was the first time they had been in the Zone. They had suffered major injuries, and probably would have died, but with their combined wills to live and not leave the other alone they pulled through. They had spent the rest of the day and night in the snow, and were heavily frostbitten. They had a whole slew of broken bones, some internal injuries, and nasty concussions. They had shared a room in the hospital, and terrorized the nurses by switching beds when they left the room, the nurses couldn't figure out why the injuries didn't match the charts. It had been painful, but they were together, and that was all that mattered to them. Several other times throughout their lives, hey had to rely on the Zone to keep the other alive, or they used it to compare notes and figure things out while they were unconscious, like they were doing now. But, they had to be together; one couldn't use it without the other, and never with another person.

"Did you find out anything?"

"Note really. They were dressed in black, but they weren't wearing masks."

"They don' intend for us to live,"

"Doesn't seem like it, but they did use tranqs, so they want something."

"Great," Jack sighed, "I want to know who hired them though. Did you hear anything they said?"

"Yeah, they only want one of us, but couldn't figure out which one. Considering what you said yesterday, I think it's me."

"Yeah well, they're not going to get you…or me."

"Jack, they've already 'got' us."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know." They both sighed.

"I think it's time we woke up, Mac, and find a way out of there."

"Let's go." Mac felt the withdrawal of Jack form his mind, and vice versa. The blackness of the zone gave way to a different kind of blackness that was easily eradicated once they opened their eyes. Jack groaned, as he remembered something,

"I still didn't get to do the dishes."

Mac chuckled, "We get captured and you can only think of dishes?"

"Well, it's nothing new. I get captured a lot." Mac turned quickly to look at his brother, stunned, the lightness from his joke gone.

"What?"

'Uh oh.' Did he really just say that? He forgot that Mac didn't know about the Stargate or the Goa'uld. "Work, it's routine almost," 'that didn't help', "I get out. You get captured a lot too!" Jack switched the blame onto Mac, knowing that that would effectively end the conversation.

"Oh…yeah, well…" 'It is true,' Mac thought. Occupational hazard "Lets find a way out shall we." They looked around the room, and both were immediately drawn to the fact that it was bare. There wasn't even a discarded paperclip, nothing. It was dark, the only light coming through the bottom and sides of the door. There was no window, and the ceiling was low, only seven feet. Jack got up, and tried the door, not surprised when it didn't budge.

"Locked," it wasn't a question, it was a statement.

"Worth a try." Jack answered. You never knew what mistakes people made when they were too overconfident.

"So…what do we do now?"

"We wait, and when they come, I find out who hired them, then we leave."

"Easy as pie."

"Yup," they grinned. Now, if only things were to go as planned.


	9. Chapter 9

_Author's Note: _I did research my facts, but some of it might be a bit exaggerated, but don't light me on fire just yet; I claim poetic license. Also, thank you to all of you who have been reading and reviewing. Wow, I can't believe I'm already at ten chapters. That's a lot for me.

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They had been discussing the latest hockey stats and quietly arguing which team was better, the Colorado Avalanche or the Minnesota Wilds, when they heard the lock turning in the door. They both looked up at each other before turning to the door.

"Show time."

"Good luck."

They separated a little bit and watched as an average looking man stepped through the door. He had black hair, was average height, normal weight. Nothing really stood out, except his dark eyes. They were unnaturally cold, and sent a shiver down MacGyver's spine. They were a killer's eyes, someone who had no remorse for the acts he'd committed. Jack's emotions subconsciously hardened at the sight.

"Which one of you is MacGyver?" The Air Force Colonel sighed and stood up, the man pulled a gun and warned him not to make a move.

"I also answer to hey you, Bubba, and the Easter Bunny."

Mac snorted, trying hard, and failing, not to laugh. They had agreed that Jack would go, he could always manipulate a situation like this better than Mac could, and Jack wouldn't let him go, but he never said that he was going to say _that_. 'Next time give a guy some warning.'

Jack smiled inwardly, he felt like he just killed two birds with one stone. He had made his brother feel a little better about the situation by making him laugh, and he had pissed off Mr. Average. He knew that when people got mad they often made mistakes, mistakes that he could and had exploited.

A fist made its way quickly across the space that separated the two. Jack had chosen not to dodge it, though, and rolled with the punch to lessen the impact. He had reasoned that it would be easier for him to escape if his opponent underestimated him; which always made things simpler. Mac abruptly stopped laughing; seeing his older sibling take a hit like that would do that to him. Even though he knew Jack was going to try and goad him, it still didn't lessen the dislike.

"Take him," he pointed to Jack. Two men came out from behind him and grabbed him none to gently by the arms and shoved him out of the room. He sent a glare at the other look-alike that was still seated, "Who are you?"

Thinking quickly, Mac took a page out of Jack's book,

"Francis Drake."

The man obviously didn't get the reference, and turned away, slamming the door behind him.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

He doubled over in pain as the man he now knew as Hyse punched him in the same spot where he had been stabbed; reopening the wound and causing it to bleed freely down his side.

"You killed three of my men!" He grabbed Jack's hair and pulled his head back, so he could look this MacGyver guy in the face. All of his intel was wrong, only the picture he got off the Internet was right. "You were supposed to be a pacifist weakling. You hate guns, you fucking hypocrite, yet you had no problem shooting them at me!"

"You were trying to kill me you asshole!"

That earned him a kick in the stomach. Hyse moved away, trying to control his anger. Jack got back up on his feet, he was never one to take things lying down, besides, and he had had worse than that. A kick and a couple punches weren't enough to keep him down. 'Enough playing around Jack,' he thought, 'time to get some answers.' "I thought he wanted me dead, not captured." Hyse turned around, and the anger at seeing him standing clouded his mind enough to not realize that he was no longer in control of the interrogation.

"He does, in fact he thinks you're already dead. _I_ wanted to see you suffer for the trouble you caused me." He stepped forward, now realizing his mistake, and made to swing a heavy punch at Jack, but he had seen it coming, and moved out the way and pulled up his knee. It had happened so quickly that he didn't notice he had moved until he slammed into the joint. An audible crack rang through the small room where Jack was being interrogated.

The move had broken a couple of Mr. Average's ribs, who cried out it pain as he fell to the floor, stunned. Jack circled him as a vulture would circle its prey and asked,

"Who wanted me dead?" he was still in the guise that he was MacGyver, not Jack O'Neill. Hyse could barely draw breath, but he managed to throw a curse to the man who had turned the tables so drastically. Jack mimicked the way he had earlier pulled back his head, and looked him in the eye. Jack had slipped into the kind of man he was during his black ops days. His face was a stone mask, and his eyes cold, not the same as Hyse though. He didn't like killing, but he knew it was something necessary sometimes, Hyse was a sick bastard who took pleasure from seeing the life drain out of the person he was being paid to eliminate. "You will tell me." He said slowly, his voice flat, calm, and unfeeling.

Hyse could feel the blood drain from his face and his bladder empty it's contents in fear of the man before him.

"Kinsey, oh god, Kinsey. Don't…don't…hurt me," he pleaded.

Jack hit him across the back of the neck, effectively insuring that he stay unconscious for a long while, and look down at him in disgust, the smell of urine permeating the room. Anger coursed through him at the mention of the senator's name. He couldn't believe it! The ass had put a hit on his brother, how the hell had he found out. He felt his knees weaken slightly in combination of the blood loss from his side and fear of losing Mac. He reached down, and retrieved the man's gun, putting it in the waistband of his pants, and removed his shirt, tying it around his side to apply pressure to the unhealed knife wound in his side.

Now was not the time for anger, it would have its time when he found the bastard, now he had to be careful and get to Mac so they could escape.

He moved towards the door and placed his ear against the cool metal. Not hearing any movement on the other side, he quietly and slowly opened it. He stepped out in the hall and cautiously headed to the room where they had left Mac. It looked like some abandoned hotel or something, but it had a lot of rooms, filled with who knew what. The doors had old fashioned, but effective, slide locks that could be removed with out a key.

He approached the right cell and knocked three times on the door,

"Pizza delivery."

Mac heard the voice and rushed to the door from where he had been sitting in the corner. He had been worried sick that something could have gone wrong. With them, it almost always did. But, he couldn't let Jack know he had been worried, he would never live it down,

"What kind?"

"Uh…pepperoni, extra cheese, sausage, olives, and peppers."

"I think that's the guy next door's, I ordered vegi."

"Too bad, this one's yours."

He looked around the hallway one last time before he unlocked the door. They both winced when it creaked on its hinges, sounding very loud in the small and empty area. Mac quickly took in Jack's appearance and slipped a supportive arm around his back, while guiding one of Jack's arms around his own shoulders. He saw the heavy blood stain on his shirt and decided that when they got out of there, he was going to a hospital, secrets be damned. There would be no point in keeping each other a secret if one of them was dead.

They headed down the corridor toward where they thought would be a good chance for an exit.

"Are you sure we're going the right way?"

"No."

"Okay," he paused for a few seconds, "You wanna stop and ask for directions?"

"No."

"Okay."

They came around a corner and were spotted by two men at the end of the next corridor who immediately shouted for them to stop where they were. Yeah right. Like they were really gonna do that.

"Wrong turn."

"Oh yeah."

"We could ask _them _for directions."

"Oh no."

They turned on their heels, and hobbled into the closest door they could find, "Let's hope this isn't some janitor's closet, Mac, or people will talk." and quickly locking it behind them. As luck would have it, it was a janitor's closet, or the remainders of one. It had a ton of things Mac could work with. He carefully sat Jack down on an overturned bucket, and quickly searched around. Finding what he was looking for, he handed it over,

"Jack, stick this under the door jamb. Hopefully it will buy us some time." He turned and looked around; inventorying all he had in front of him, and thinking up things he could do with them. Mac was in his element, just as Jack was with weapons and tactics, Mac was a genius when it came to recognizing the different uses of random items that surrounded him. "Lets see what we've got here."

He walked over to the shelf opposite him and began analyzing the labels of all the dust-covered bottles. 'Floor cleaner, Clorox, rubbing alcohol, ammonia, mineral spirits, Simple Green, toilet bowl cleaner, more rubbing alcohol…wait.' Mac grabbed the toilet cleaner and ammonia, and looked at Jack, seeing his funny expression, he explained:

"Old toilet cleaners like this one contain some hydrochloric acid, and when you mix it with this ammonia here-"

"Smoke," Jack wasn't as dumb as he acted. He could only be himself around Mac, even though chemistry was his brother's strong suit, he still got an 'A' on his finals.

"Got it in one bro, give me a hand here." He handed Jack one of the bottles while he went over to the other side of the room to pick up a rag he had spotted. He ripped it in half, tied one around his head over his brother's eyes, and did the same to himself,

"Where's the piñata?" Jack joked.

"They're on their way," just at that moment, they heard a loud thud coming from the door of their little refuge. "Lets get started, Jack, back up a little then toss some of your ammonia on the floor right in front of you. We'll switch off and hopefully create a smoke screen."

"Sure thing. Side order of smoke, coming right up," and thus they started, working together, layering ammonia and the hydrochloric acid in the toilet cleaner, with smoke slowly starting to rise from Mac's improvised recipe for an escape.

"Look away!" Mac knew that the smoke produced from the chemical reaction was dangerous, known to burn the eyes and produce an effect similar to mace or pepper spray.

The smoke had filled the room, obscuring everything from sight. Throughout the process, they heard the banging on the door; the bad guys were obviously trying to break it down. If they could have seen through the smoke, which they couldn't, they would have seen that the door was showing signs of starting to give way, so it startled them when it was blown open, clipping Jack in the nose on its swing.

The three men who stormed the room were immediately assaulted by the thick smoke and grabbed at their burning eyes, each groaning or crying out in combined surprise and pain. The two brothers regained their wits sooner, and MacGyver grabbed a broom that he had seen earlier and struck out into the white abyss. The wooden handle connected with a body, and Mac continued his attack until his opponent was down. Jack had used the only weapon he had available, the ammonia bottle, and had waited until he heard one of their kidnappers approach, since they were making so much noise…such language! One stumbled in front of him, cursing like a sailor and Jack viciously struck out at him. He switched to punching with his fist with spectacular accuracy, forgetting about the bottle that he still hadn't let go of. The cursing abruptly ended as his target fell to the floor unconscious. The third guy had realized that he was now blind _and_ alone, and he panicked, striking out wildly in all directions, unwittingly telling Mac exactly where he was. He easily took him down. Even though Mac disliked violence, he _was_ good at defending himself, but when he had his only family left to protect, he could be equally as efficient as Jack.

Jack had thought they had taken out all of the guys, the moaning having ended, leaving the room in silence until his heightened senses told him that there was someone by his side. He turned slowly and…whack!

"Ow!"

"Mac?"

"Yeah! Jack! What'd you do that for!"

"Sorry, thought you were a bad guy."

"Well, I'm not.

"You sure?" Jack could feel the glare Mac sent him without having to see it. "Maybe I should hit ya again just to make sure."

"Take off that darn rag, let's go. I don't want to stick around for when those guys wake up." The smoke was already dissipating, he knew it would only last a few seconds, but still long enough to do what was needed.

"Good job Mac," Jack praised, being serious for a rare moment, impressed by the way his brother could always find a way out of a jam. He was the reason why he always said that, "there is always an 'or'".

Jack draped his arm across his brother's shoulders for support and they once again headed down the hallway, neither knowing where they were going.

"Where are we?" Jack asked, not sure of facility they had been taken to.

"I have no idea." Apparently Mac wasn't either.

With no one left conscious to chase them, they eventually found their way out without incident. As they stepped out into the moonlight, Mac realized that the building they were in was an old abandoned psych ward not far out of town. He had hotwired a black van that they found parked around back, most likely belonging to the idiots who had kidnapped them, and pulled onto the street, heading back to L.A. That was when Jack had passed out. He had lost too much blood.

Mac had resolved earlier to take him to the hospital, and that was exactly what he was going to do. There was no way he could patch him up now, what he needed was a doctor.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

He ran as fast as his feet would take him. This was their only lead they had ever had since his disappearance, and there was no way he wasn't going to act on it as soon as he could. They had been watching police reports and calling hospitals across the country, desperate to find a trace of his location. Daniel knew the General was busy in a briefing with SG-2, but it didn't stop him, he knew he was as worried as they all were, so he barged through the door, barely stopping for breath.

All eyes turned to him, and Feretti nodded his head in greeting,

"General Hammond sir, I've got some news."

"Well go ahead son," the General's attention was now completely on him.

"There's a hospital in LA that called us back saying that someone admitted a man matching his description an hour ago."

"A hospital?"

"What's Jack doing in LA?" Feretti asked. Everyone on base knew about his disappearance, it was hard to miss his absence. The place felt different without him, not to mention the depression of the SGC's flagship team. The General ignored SG-2's commander's question and asked one of his own,

"What's his condition?" If the man was in a hospital, it had to be bad. Colonel O'Neill hated hospitals and would refuse to go to one until his arms fell off.

"They say he's got a nasty stab wound down his side and was losing a lot of blood. She also said that he was lucky it didn't hit anything vital. He's also got a lot of bruises on his face and across his stomach. They say that the worst thing though is the knife wound, and they are watching for infection." The General was quiet for a moment, letting the information sink in, and then he made his decision.

"Doctor Jackson, tell Major Carter to assemble SG-1, you leave on the next flight to LA military or civilian. Good Luck," Daniel turned to leave, eager to get on his way, but Hammond called him back, "Son, it might not be him you know."

"I know sir, but I'm not going to give up."

"I know. But, if it is him…bring him back."

"I will sir," then he bounded out the door, running down the hall once more, this time to go tell Sam and Teal'c that they had a go.


	10. Chapter 10

An incessant beeping woke him. It was annoying, really, but it was also sort of familiar. Beep…beep beep…beep beep…beep. His mouth was dry and tasted weird. He gathered up the strength to finally open his eyes and slammed them back shut immediately when an excruciatingly bright light overloaded his senses. He couldn't help the groan that escaped from his throat at the pain in his optical nerves. But before it subsided, someone put something pleasantly cool in his mouth that dripped down to soothe his sore throat, and the relief quickly overshadowed the fading pain. As his foggy mind cleared, he realized that this place smelled very unpleasant, like antiseptic, like a hospital.

'Shit'

He heard someone tell him to try to open his eyes. He sounded familiar, someone he knew he trusted, someone he knew he should listen to, so he did. He opened his eyes and noticed that the lights had been turned down, thank god. He could actually see now. He looked around the room and what he saw confirmed what he had already realized. It was a hospital, the last place he wanted to be. His eyes finally found the face that matched the voice that was speaking to him in comforting tones. He tried to speak, and was surprised when all that came out was a squeak. He closed his mouth, cleared his throat, then tried again,

"Mac?"

"Yeah Jack. I'm here." He knew that Jack was going to be mad at him for taking him to a hospital, but he figured it was worth it. It gave Jack a chance to heal a little, and get proper medical attention, which he had desperately needed whether he agreed or not.

"Why the _hell_ am I here?"

Mac did a good impersonation of a guppy, trying to come up with the right thing to say that would appease him, but before he could speak, the memory of something far more important came to Jack's mind. "Crap, I need to get out of here." He struggled with the sheets; a little weak because of the after-effects of the anesthesia and the added fact that Mac was trying to push him back down on the bed.

"Jack hold on, calm down. Jack…Jack stop!" and he did, for a little while, "What's the matter?"

"I know who's behind all of this, the scum sucking little-"

"Jack! Who?" Jack looked at him with an expression of pure hatred and anger and something else MacGyver couldn't identify.

"Kinsey," the word was spat out like it was something putrid. Mac was shocked.

"Senator Kinsey? Senator Robert Kinsey?" he didn't need and answer, and it was just as well because Jack wasn't ready to give him one. He had started pulling out all of the different tubes and IV's that were attached to various places around his body, pausing long enough to notice the bandages wrapped around his midsection.

"Bastard!" At the expletive Jack stopped. He rarely heard that kind of language come from his brother.

"What?"

"Didn't you hear me when I was told you about the case that I was investigating for a friend? The one in DC."

"I heard, but you never mentioned names."

"What about with Pete?"

"Um, to be honest, I was a little preoccupied with being ambushed, shot, and kidnapped."

"Oh right…well the shady senator I was tailing was Kinsey. Senator Kinsey. I uncovered a lot of dirt on him, but nothing along the lines of arranged murder. Bribery, illegal campaign contributions, blackmail, misappropriations of funds, and a lot of stuff like that. He must have gotten wind of the investigation…"

Jack had stopped listening, trapped in his own thoughts after he heard that Mac had his own fight with the jerk. He had thought it was his fault that the slime was after Mac, and was relieved that it wasn't, but he was even more afraid for him now that the senator was after him for a totally different purpose, one that didn't include Jack. 'But he knew enough about Mac, he must know what he looks like, then…' He realized that it didn't change anything, he still would have seen the similarities between the two twins, they _were_ identical, and he would have made the connection, and that would give him extra incentive to get rid of Mac, because of himself, so still no change.

He looked up, realizing that Mac had stopped talking, and figured that they needed to get out, now for a different reason: they were sitting ducks in a hospital.

"Mac, go find me some clothes, we need to go."

"Are you sure you should leave?"

"Mac," he warned, "I'm fine. Go!" Mac looked him over, clearly deciding if he should take what he said at face value, and then walked towards the door. He threw him a questioning look to which Jack replied with an impatient nod, and left. Jack sighed and threw his head back onto the pillow,

"Damn!"

It wasn't long before Mac returned with a pair of scrub pants with little puppy dogs on them and a white shirt with the hospital's name printed in red letters on the front. He tossed the clothes on the bed, which Jack quickly hopped off of.

"Can you believe they have gift shops in hospitals now?" Mac asked, completely amazed at what our society has come to.

"They have them everywhere now, it's annoying," He pulled on the pants while giving Mac a look of 'you really want me to where this?'

Mac sent one back that said 'you do if you want to get out of here.' Jack continued dressing while still going on his rant about gift shops, "Anywhere you go nowadays you have to get out through the gift shop," He quickly pulled on the shirt as they both shook their heads, sighing, and Mac handed him some flip-flops.

"It was all they had, I promise," He also placed a Los Angeles Anaheim Angels ball cap on his brother's head, "to hide the bruises on your face. Wouldn't want to scare any small children."

Jack threw him a sarcastic smile and put them on, 'After all,' he resolved, 'the first place we go after this is a clothing store. They walked out of the room and down the hall towards freedom.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It turned out that the soonest flight to LA was a civilian flight. They had made good time, (it helped when they got to skip all the lines and security checks by flashing their military ID) landing in LA in a little under two hours. Major Carter had called ahead and booked a rental car and had it waiting for them when they arrived. Daniel had sat in the back seat with the map, navigating, and Teal'c sat in the front seat of the small sedan because he couldn't fit in the back. Traffic was nonexistent because it was late, or rather early. They arrived at the hospital and jogged through the hallways until they reached the nurse station. Already there was a blonde woman and a bald, chubby man engaged in a heated discussion with one of the on duty nurses.

Daniel approached the other nurse that was there,

"I'm Doctor Daniel Jackson, I spoke to one of the nurses on the phone regarding my friend Jack O'Neill." Pete turned his head at the mention of the name of the man he knew was his best friend's brother. The man he was trying to see. He and Murphy had listened to police chatter on the scanner, hoping to find any hint of MacGyver and O'Neill's whereabouts when they had heard a call from an officer requesting back up after responding to an anonymous call. He had been at the old Spring Valley Psychiatric Center, where the caller had reported an attempted kidnapping, and when he arrived he had found several men unconscious. Pete and Murphy had headed out to the scene, where Murphy got to have a look around. She had come out and told Pete that it looked like Mac had been there, his handiwork highly obvious to those who knew him.

They had headed out to the closest hospitals in the area, searching for them, asking about all recently admitted patients. They had found this one where a man matching Jack's description was admitted, except the darn nurse wouldn't let them check in on them because it was past visiting hours. Murphy had been arguing with one of the nurses, but she, like Pete, had heard the name O'Neill. She moved away from the nurse mid-sentence, and walked up to SG-1.

"Hi I'm Lieutenant Kate Murphy, this is my friend Pete Thornton," she stuck out her hand and shook it with Daniel who really didn't want to deal with pleasantries at the moment, "I couldn't help but overhear that you were looking for a friend…did you say his name was Jack O'Neill?" They all turned toward the blonde woman, with surprise and suspicion.

"Yeah, why?"

"He was kidnapped with a friend of mine, they escaped and ended up here. We are trying to see him, but they won't let us." Just then, the nurse that Daniel had spoken to made her reappearance,

"Doctor Jackson, If you and your friends would follow me," SG-1 plus two moved down the hall to the room where Jack had been placed, "You have five minutes then I'm afraid you have to leave." She opened the door and they all stepped through.

Six mouths dropped to the floor when they realized that the room was empty, on the bed, their only trace: a dripping IV.

"Where is Colonel O'Neill?" Teal'c spoke up.

"I…I…I don't know," the nurse sputtered. Her patient was gone. Last time she checked on him, He was sound asleep, and his brother was there watching him. She rushed over to the chart and made sure that he wasn't moved last minute without someone telling her, but the last entry on it was her own.

"They couldn't just get up and walk away, could they?" Murphy asked, turning towards Major Carter.

"Knowing the Colonel, he could have. We'll need to view the security tapes of the front door."

"Sure…sure, follow me,"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

They had reviewed hours of footage and gone through three pots of coffee before they saw it.

"Stop it right there Sam, go back a bit," Daniel, who was very keen at looking for slight details, it happened when you were an archaeologist, was pointing on the screen at the backs of two people. One was clad in a weird assortment of clothes, and the other was semi supporting him as they walked out the hospital doors. "That's got to be Jack, but who's the other guy?"

Murphy had come closer to examine the screen at Daniel's original outburst and upon seeing the familiar figure, she answered,

"That's Mac…I wonder where they're going?"

"I wonder why they're leaving," countered Carter, "he's obviously injured. He needs to be in a hospital."

"The only reason why Jack would leave was if he felt he was in danger here or someone else was in danger," Daniel counted himself Jack's best friend, if anyone knew Jack O'Neill it was him, or so he thought.

"So we are left with even more questions than answers."

They all looked at each other, silently willing one of them to come up with the solution out of thin air. But it wasn't going to happen.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

After "escaping" the hospital, Jack dragged his younger brother to the nearest clothing store he could find, which happened to be a place geared more towards teenagers. He plucked a pair of jeans of the rack and grabbed a baggy sweater, one that could easily hide the conspicuous bulge of a gun. Walking through the store, they both suddenly felt really old, it also didn't help that every person there was staring at them. If Mac wasn't feeling really awkward, he would have laughed, seeing the way Jack was dressed. It looked like a two year old had dressed him.

Jack put the clothes on in the privacy of the dressing room and pulled off the tags, leaving the hospital clothes Mac had gotten him in the stall, he was about to leave when he turned around, and grabbed the puppy dog scrubs, tying them around his waist, 'I'll just hang on to these, they'll make great payback,' he thought with a positively wicked grin. He was still wearing the cap low on his face to hide his features as he joined his twin, handing the tags to the cashier so Mac could pay. He had his wallet that had been taken from his person when he was stripped for surgery.

As they left the store, now more able to blend in, Jack spotted a pay phone booth,

"Mac, give me some quarters…I've got to make a phone call,"

"Do I dare ask?"

"Not if you don't want me to shoot ya,"

Mac forked over the money as Jack jogged across the street and entered the booth. He quickly dialed an old number from his past.

"Hello?" A gruff voice asked.

"Dave, it's me, Jack,"

"Jack O'Neill? Damn it's been a long time,"

"Yeah. Hey, listen, you remember that favor you owe me?"

'Uh oh,' Dave thought, "Yeah…"

"I'm considering us even."

It was a few minutes later when Jack sauntered across the road back to Mac.

"So?"

"I got us a plane, fueled and ready to go, at Edwards Air Force Base. Once we arrive in D.C.-"

"Whoa whoa whoa, since when are we going to D.C.!" He knew why Jack was going, and he knew what he was most likely going to do. He just wasn't sure if it was the best idea, or if it would make things worse. Jack looked Mac right in the eye. His face, attitude, and aura all screamed his determination,

"I'm going _with _or _without_ you Mac, but I'm going."

MacGyver was never really one for vigilante justice; he preferred to go through the proper judicial process. After all, he did already have incriminating evidence against the Senator, but when he remembered the fact that he had give the order that had almost harmed the most important person to him in the world, none of that mattered. Jack had filled him in on some of his own dealings with the senator, which made him dislike him even more. He wanted to make sure that the man was in a position where he could no longer be able to hurt anyone else. He wasn't going to kill him, he couldn't, it wasn't in his nature, and he sure as hell wouldn't let Jack kill him as much as he wanted to, because he didn't want his brother to spend the rest of his life rotting in jail, or worse, so he had to go along. Not that it was even an option to him not to go.

"I'm going Jack…someone has to watch your back and keep you out of trouble,"

A brief smile found its way onto Jack's face at the comment before it was quickly suppressed and replaced with an all business attitude.

"Okay, so as I was saying before, I'll fly us there where we'll have a car waiting for us at an abandoned air landing strip in Southern Virginia, We'll drive the rest of the way,"

"Sounds like a plan."


	11. Chapter 11

Sorry about the long wait ya'll, but my muse abandoned me, and I got bogged down with homework. Everything's been busy, and I have had to put this on the backburners for a bit, but I'm stilll working on it; the updates will just be a tad bit slower.

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They were currently cruising at a high altitude of 30,000 feet when something occurred to Mac.

"Hey Jack…"

"Yeah?"

"Are you AWOL? I mean, you didn't tell your CO where you were going did you?"

There was a slight pause as Jack reflected on what happened the last few days. 'Jeeze it seems like so long ago.'

"No."

Mac was a bit taken back at the ramifications. He wasn't military but that doesn't mean he didn't know how they worked.

"Isn't that _bad_? Can't you get court-martialed or something?"

"To be honest, I hadn't thought about it. They probably just think I've been kidnapped, and then I wouldn't be trialed. I would just show up and say 'Hey I escaped, I'm back' and life would go on like normal." He really hadn't considered what Hammond and SG-1 might be going through. He had been more concerned with Mac. Now he felt a little bit guilty, he should have done something to tell them he was fine and they didn't have to start a search. Maybe he should have left a note?

"_You would let them believe you were in danger_?" Mac sputtered, "Jack! You've told me about your 'team', I know that you care a lot about them. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe they might be worried about you!" Now Mac was angry, he knew Jack wasn't dumb, but sometimes he could be really dense!

"Would you rather me have told them about us? What would I say? 'Hey Daniel, Carter, but I can't come to work today because I've got to save my twin brother that I've kept secret from you from an egotistical senator who wants him dead'! I had to make a choice, and if I had to disappear for a few days to save your butt, you damn well know I would!"

All of MacGyver's anger fled when he heard the anguish in his brother's voice. He knew that right about now, some serious guilt would be settling in. It was up to him to try and find a way to resolve the situation, otherwise it would just fester. There was no way Jack would ever be able to do anything that had to deal with emotions.

Silence reigned in the small, cramped cockpit.

"I bet they're looking for you." Mac heard a sigh from the front seat.

"I know. I know they're looking for me."

Another pause.

"Maybe you can convince them to stop. Your CO…Hammond?…sounds like a reasonable guy. He'll probably let ya off the hook if you explain things to him."

"You mean if I tell him." Jack turned his head to stare out at the clouds he passing, he always got a calm feeling when he flew, that is, when people weren't trying to shoot him down, and considered what Mac had said.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Major General George Hammond sat at his desk staring out into space. His second-in-command disappeared three, he looked at his watch, four days ago. Then, out of the blue yesterday he was checked into a hospital in Los Angeles, California, of all places; but before his team shows up, he disappears again, being led out of the hospital by a Mr. MacGyver, identified by a Detective Murphy aiding SG-1. 'What in Sam Hill is going on?' he thought.

He sighed a long soul cleansing sigh and once more looked at the file in front of him. As soon as he had heard of this new person he had ordered a background check to try to find answers, but unfortunately it left him more unsettled. There clipped onto the manila folder with a paperclip was a picture. A picture of someone he would have sworn was his missing officer. But it wasn't, unless Jack O'Neill was MacGyver…a past identity? Alias? Then who was the other man on the videotape? There was no way that they could be the same person. So what then? Brothers…no, twins? There was no mention of a _twin_ brother in O'Neill's file or records, but it wouldn't have been the first time the man has lied in an official report. Hell, even he himself had omitted certain…happenings…from his reports. But to keep something like this a secret…

He had Walter run a detailed check on MacGyver, and he came up with no trace of a link between the two whatsoever, so they must have been extremely thorough in deleting evidence.

He just couldn't get his head around it. Men ransacked the colonel's house and the first thing he did is fly to LA to visit his brother? Why? What happened to make the colonel completely forget about his duty to his country, his planet?

There was a knock on the door and he barely had time to say, "Enter" before Sgt. Walter Davis swung it open. According to his body language, he clearly would have done it with or without answer from the General. His eyes were wide with surprise, relief, and curiosity.

"Sir, Colonel O'Neill is asking to speak to you on line two." Ah, that would explain the surprise, since he now felt it as well. He muttered his thanks to the non-com and hurriedly picked up the phone,

"Colonel?"

"Sir…" Jack had no idea what to say, he hadn't really planned that far.

"Where are you?" Hammond had about a million questions floating around in his bald head, but that was the first one that slipped out.

"D.C. sir," They had gotten in the rental that Jack's friend had supplied and were currently in a small area just outside of DC appropriately named Crystal City for all the glass office buildings, but he wasn't going to pinpoint his exact location over the phone.

"And may I ask why?"

Jack knew that it was an order thinly masked by a request.

"It's personal sir. I called to tell you that I'm okay; you don't need to authorize a rescue/strike force to come get me. I did this on my own free will…. sir." All he needed right now was for Hammond to send his team. "General…George, I've got a bunch of leave piled up. I'm just taking a few days, maybe more." He sounded tired and Hammond knew that there was no way he could deny him, so he decided instead to try and get as many answers as he could from his officer.

"Who's MacGyver, Jack?"

As he heard his brother's name uttered by his CO, he felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. His most well kept secret was now known, out in the open, blowing in the wind, plastered on billboards, and there was no way he could shove it back down under the rug. His knees felt weak as if they would buckle under him at any minute, leaving him in an ungainly heap on the floor.

Mac watched as his brother visibly blanched. His eyes, full of fear, gazed at Mac before they were quickly diverted elsewhere, namely the floor.

He swallowed hard before he answered,

"Off the record," he whispered into the receiver.

"Of course son,"

If he told him, there would be absolutely no going back. It's not that he didn't trust Hammond, he trusted him with his life, it was that if one person knew, it greatly increased the chances of someone else knowing. He had already told Pete Thornton. Two in as many days was a lot, seeing as they were (roughly) the only ones who knew for over thirty years.

"MacGyver…Mac," he wasn't really sure how to tell him so he uncharacteristically just blurted it out, "Mac'smytwinbrother."

Oh.

First of all, that explained to Mac why he had seen a rare emotion in his brother's eyes. They were both very protective of each other, and regretted having to disclose any information that could possibly bring harm to the other.

Second of all, it explained to General Hammond why he had a picture of a man that looked just like O'Neill, except a tad younger and with slightly longer hair.

"There is no record of a living relative nor a next of kin in any of your files,"

"I know sir. We changed them. General," he sighed, "please don't tell anyone. We've kept this a secret for a long time, and we would really like for it to remain that-"

"Jack!" Mac interrupted with a warning tone in his voice.

The older sibling turned and spotted where Mac was pointing. Across the street, a dark SUV with government plates pulled up to the curb while at another corner another conspicuously government vehicle pulled up.

Jack abruptly hung up with a quick,"Got to go sir,"

"Who the hell is it Mac?"

"I don't know, they just showed up,"

Possible guesses of their identities were running through both their minds. NID, Trust, more contract killers, people sent by Kinsey, any number of people. Jack left the phone booth, with Mac following, and headed into the nearest door he came to, which happened to be an old antique shop.

The bell jingled as they entered, and Mac looked over his shoulder through a large picture window, keeping an eye on the vehicles while Jack occupied himself with the owner who came to greet them.

"Hello, is there anything that I can do to help you?"

"You're doing it already, we're just having a look around," strange how some things could have double meanings.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The General looked at the phone in his hand in shock of the brusqueness in which Colonel O'Neill had cut him off. The only reason why he would do that was if he suddenly became preoccupied and had to deal with an unexpected situation. 'Screw leaving him alone,' he thought as he picked up the telephone and called the only people he knew that O'Neill would have to let help him: SG-1. After all, the Colonel hadn't finished his request, and he hadn't agreed to anything besides it being off the record.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Carter swiped her key card through an electric sensor that flashed a green light and opened the door into the adjoining hotel rooms that SG-1, Detective Kate Murphy, and Peter Thornton were using as a temporary HQ for the search for two missing men. A search that was about to take them back across the country. Daniel and Pete looked up at her entrance.

"Hey Sam, any luck?"

"Yes and no. The General called me with some knew info,"

"General Hammond? What'd he say?" Daniel was sitting against the headboard on one of the beds and looked up from where he currently had his nose in a big book with a worn leather cover. Pete had files spread across the only desk in the room; he had been working on personal stuff for The Foundation. Teal'c was in the next room over, meditating, while Murphy was off speaking to whomever she could get a hold of, searching for any clues to her friend's location.

"Apparently Colonel O'Neill called him a short while ago,"

"Really?" Both Daniel and Pete briefly turned they heads towards each other, each having asked the question at the same time, disbelief coloring their words. "Where was he? Is he okay?" Daniel added, returning his questioning gaze to the Major.

"He says he's with Mr. MacGyver in DC."

'What is he doing in DC?' Daniel thought, 'he hates DC: too many politicians.'

"DC?" This time Pete stood up, things just kept getting weirder and weirder, "Mac and I just came back from DC."

"Yeah? What for?"

"We were investigating a senator who was believed to be dealing dirty." Pete caught the looks that Daniel and Sam exchanged, "What?"

"Could you by any chance tell us _which_ senator?" Sam asked politely, a knot forming in her gut. Sure, there were many corrupt senators, it was POLITICS, but for some reason she couldn't explain, she _knew_ who it was. So did Daniel.

'Oh what the hell, in for a penny, in for a pound. It'll be all over the papers in a week or so anyway, they might as well know now if it helps those two misfits somehow.' "Senator Kinsey. Mac and I had been trailing him for about a week. In fact, we just got back a couple days ago." And man what a long couple of days it had been.

"Damn!"

"I believe that it is an institution to teach young children that O'Neill and MacGyver have journeyed to the Washington District of Colombia to…go after…Senator Kinsey."

Pete and Carter stared at Teal'c, who had just appeared at the door joining the two rooms, trying to decipher what exactly it was that he had just said, but Daniel got it way before they did.

"It's elementary Teal'c, and have you been reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?"

"Indeed," He gave a tiny bow of his head in the affirmative.

"Riiiight…anyway, I think he may be right. It seems like something Jack would do, but why?"

"Mac and Jack are very…close," Pete answered cryptically, "It could be that they figured out who it was that had ordered their kidnapping."

"Do you think that MacGyver is there as well?" Sam asked Pete.

"Without a doubt! Where one is, you're sure to find the other."

"So we go to DC then?" This from Daniel, he couldn't believe at the way Jack seemed to be hopping across the continent. He silently hoped that when they got there, he wouldn't have changed locations again.

"Looks like it," Sam replied.

"What do we do when we get there?"

"Find Kinsey," What else _could _they do?

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Sorry guys, but it might be a little bit till the next one. I know it seems like I keep putting off Mac & SG-1's meeting, but I have the perfect moment in mind, don't worry, it'll happen, soon. R & R people! thanks to all you loyal readers out there for supporting me through your reviews.


	12. Chapter 12

I know it's been a while since my last update, but I'm going as fast as I can. I hope you enjoy!

Any mistakes are mine, as I don't have a beta.

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Mac had called Jack from where he was surreptitiously watching out the window when he saw several uniformed men, and woman, emerge from one of the cars. An acronym emblazoned in yellow across their jackets said they were Navy Criminal Investigators. The group had drawn guns and entered a nearby building about a block away from where he and Jack were.

O'Neill promptly put down an antique weapon that he was asking the store owner about and approached his brother asking,

"What?"

MacGyver didn't verbally respond, instead he casually pointed across the street where the 'squad' was disappearing. Jack sighed in relief when he understood what was transgressing.

"It's all one big coincidence. They're here for something else, not us." He said in quiet tones so they wouldn't be overheard.

"Still," Mac responded, "I'd rather not be around if somehow someone finds out that we're here."

"Yeah," Jack took one more glance around the quaint little store, "let's go."

With a murmured thanks to the owner for his time, they left the store and snuck around the corner of the block and climbed back into their own car. They were both worried that something might go wrong and someone would notice them, but nothing and no one did. Mac hopped in behind the driver's seat, as Jack would always get utterly lost in DC, and just started driving, not really having a planned destination yet. They just wanted to be out of the area; there would always be time for u-turns later if needed.

After about five minutes of the type of silence one gets when deep in thought, Mac spoke.

"Do we know where we're going?"

Mac had subconsciously headed over the bridge and into the heart of DC itself. They were currently just passing the famous SPY Museum, and Jack had to chuckle at that. Mac sent him a curious glance, his focus being on the road and not what they were passing.

"Have you ever been there?"

'Huh?' Mac thought, 'Been where?' He stopped for the red light and followed his brother's gaze to the building in question. 'Oh'

"No, I've never been. I get too much of it in real life I guess."

"Figures."

"Yeah," a short pause, "so, where're we goin'?"

"I'm thinking we go right to the source, and stop this now."

"Kinsey?"

"Oh yeah."

"Okay then. Let's go." He hung a right at the light that they were currently stopped at, heading towards the senator's house. He knew exactly where it was; he had spent the last week or so following the pompous jerk to and from it.

"Hang on there Speedy Gonzales, I'm not you. I need a plan, besides, it's five-thirty. A, or first," he mocked. He and Mac shared an alias when sometimes working undercover that was a complete nerd. They both got a kick out of it, and sometimes would tease each other and slip into the character just for fun. "He may not be home, and B, or second, we can't do it during the day. We should wait until dark."

Mac knew he was right, he just wanted to go after the ass that wanted to try to harm the most important thing to him, Jack, and himself. He also knew that Jack felt the same way, and that helped a bit. He sighed and turned towards the slightly older man,

"You're right, but what do we do now?"

Jack responded with a cocky grin,

"I need to do some shopping."

'Joy'

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

SG-1, on such short notice, had amazingly been able to find a flight that would take them to DC, arriving approximately at seven-fifteen, give or take a few minutes. Their seat assignments, however, had not been so lucky. They were mostly scattered throughout the plane with Teal'c in the back sitting next to a young boy with endless questions; Daniel several rows ahead of him, sandwiched between a Yankee's fan and a Red Sox fan; and Carter across the way and two rows forward, sitting next to a guy that would make Richard Simmons look like Rambo. Pete and Kate Murphy had been the most fortunate of the group, having the two isle seats next to each other so they could talk.

Murphy leaned over the narrow space dividing her and her friend,

"Pete?"

"Yeah?" he put down a fishing magazine that currently held his attention, and focused on the detective.

"They don't know do they, about Mac and this O'Neill guy being brothers?"

Pete chanced a glance backwards down the plane out of habit just to make sure that none of the team was standing behind him.

"No, I'm positive that they don't know," he spoke in a hushed voice, to keep anyone else from listening to what he was saying, "From what I gather of Jack O'Neill, he is a very private man. I doubt he would have told them."

The only reason that Kate knew was because he _had_ to tell her. He had to explain what had happened to Mac and that included his twin brother.

"Shouldn't we at least warn them? I mean, it's going to be such a shock to them…"

"Yes, it will be, but we should really leave it to Mac and Jack to explain it to them. We have no right to do otherwise."

Pete leaned back into his seat and picked up his magazine opening it to the page he had abandoned, but couldn't focus on the words and images before him. His mind was racing, silently asking forgiveness from Mac for involving even more people into what was the most important secret he had ever been keeping. Pete was right though; they really did have no right.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Gradually the cabin of the plane had grown darker and darker as the sun retreated from its location in the sky. It wasn't quite dark yet, but it was getting there. The forecasted ETA of Flight 1639 to Washington DC from LA, California was right on the money.

So they were all impressed with themselves when Pete, Murphy and the three members of SG-1 were out of the airport and in a rental car in under half an hour. The few possessions that they did bring were carried on the plane with them, so they didn't waste time at the baggage claim having to fight their way through crowds or argue with other passengers who were certain that the bag you were holding was their own.

They were all loaded in the SUV when Daniel, who had elected to drive, so eloquently asked,

"Umm…guys, where are we going to go?" There was immediate silence as everyone suddenly realized that they had no plan. It was a few seconds before Teal'c spoke up, breaking the silence,

"I believe it would be prudent to head towards Senator Kinsey's place of residence. It would seem fitting that O'Neill and MacGyver would be there, knowing O'Neill would wish to eliminate such a threat as one that he has posed."

"Okay, anybody know where that is?"

"I do," Pete spoke up, and proceeded to give directions.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

MacGyver parked a little ways away from the location of their target so as not to attract any unwanted attention, and stared in over exaggerated disgust of his brother.

"Do you have to have one of those?" he asked. Jack stopped loading and checking his newly acquired gun and looked at Mac with a serious face.

"I understand that you don't like them, and I respect that, but yes, I do need one." Truth be told, he felt naked without one. He looked him in the eye while reaching for the handle for the door.

"Okay," Mac reluctantly conceded. They had had many conversations, arguments, on just this topic alone, and it would never change. There was no way he could ever get Jack to change his mind, and he had learned to live with it; he just wouldn't touch the thing himself.

They both exited the vehicle while Jack mumbled to himself something about wishing he had a zat that Mac could use.

"A what?"

Oops, he had heard him.

"Nothing…are you ready to do this?"

Mac knew that Jack was purposely avoiding the question, and let it slide. He would confront him later when things were quieter, now was not the time.

"Yeah, I get the front, you go around back."

"Yup," They jogged towards the senator's house, and before they got too far away from each other, Mac called out,

"Hey bro, keep your head down, don't get shot again."

"Hey!" He tried to look innocent and raised his right arm to wave, but barely hid the wince when the action pulled on his healing stitches from his stab wound. 'God, it seems like forever since I got this,' he thought as he disappeared from MacGyver's view. He headed around to the back of the ostentatious house, and couldn't believe Kinsey's arrogance. The building was designed to look exactly like the White House in every way. Damn jerk.

Mac, according to the plan, was to go in through the front door, avoiding sensors in the yard, and meet up with Jack once they were inside, then they would go and confront Kinsey.

He had reached the door and was just pulling out his lock picking tools when a car pulled up to the curb. Mac shot up when he heard his name being called, or at least what he thought was his name, by a young man he didn't recognize. All he had actually heard was something that sounded like "ack".

Surprised, he let his attention wander from the door to the man who was walking towards him across the lawn; he was only about twenty feet from him.

"Wait! Stop where you are!" Mac semi-shouted in warning. 'Shoot, shoot, shoot!' "You'll set off an al-" Too late. They both heard the loud sirens from inside, alerting their quarry of his presence. Idiot!

Daniel looked up at the man he thought was Jack sheepishly, he hadn't known about the alarms.

"Come on Jack, let's get out of here," he had to shout to be heard. He ran up the rest of the way and grabbed a hold of MacGyver's arm, but he was having none of it. He didn't know who this person was. He glanced back to the car and was stunned to find Pete waiting by one of the doors, urging him to hurry. 'Pete? What's he doing here?'

The strength of the young man next to him surprised him, and before he knew it, he was half way to the car.

"Wait, wait, I can't go-"

"Come on, Jack, let's go,"

"But…Jack-"

"Jack, quite dragging your feet. You of all people know what that sound means."

"But-" They were now at the car, and Pete had gotten in and had made room for him in the now cramped back seat. He was none so gently shoved in, the door slammed behind him, the young dark haired and bespectacled man had gotten in the drivers seat and pulled out onto the road.

Everything had happened so fast, that Mac hadn't had a chance to get one word in. He had been stunned, and looked at Pete with a questioning glance.

"Hey Mac, good to see ya safe," his friend said quietly.

"Sir, we've come to take you back home. We expected the worst after we had heard that you were checked into the ER," his attention was now on a pretty blonde that was a stranger to him.

"Sir? Stop! I can't leave him," 'Why had they taken him?'

"Leave who O'Neill?" 'O'Neill? Oh shi- that's what happened.'

"I'm not Jack! My name's MacGyver!" He shouted, angry, stunned and confused, "We have to go back for him. I'm not leaving him behind!"

Everyone was jerked forward when Daniel slammed on the breaks. There was stunned silence in the car, as Daniel, Carter, and Teal'c stared at the man they all had thought was their CO. All Daniel could think was, 'What the hell?' which was running through the other two's minds although in different variations

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Jack had headed around to the back door, careful not to set off the many alarms he knew existed and waited two minutes to let Mac get in position. He had already picked the lock in no time, and had just pushed open the door and stepped onto the hard wood floor inside. He was no longer worried about alarms for if one were to go off, it would have done so already.

As if in response to his thoughts, a blaring noise echoed through the house. Caught off guard and surprised he froze. 'What the Hell?' He was positive that he didn't set them off, so that insinuated that Mac did, and he was good enough to not to make such a rookie mistake as tripping an alarm, so that meant….oh god.

All of a sudden he felt alone. There was no better way to describe it except that he somehow knew that Mac wasn't there. Something had happened to him. He tried to fight down a wave of panic that threatened to consume him and steadied his breathing. This was not a time to panic.

The hackles on the back of his neck stood on end, alerting him of danger. He barely had time to register the feeling when he heard a creak come from the stairs behind him.

He turned out of pure reflexes and it was just his luck that as his head moved, it connected solidly with the unforgiving hardness of a baseball bat. There was no time to block it as his mind was preoccupied and not at all focused on what was going on around him as it should have been. Mistakes like that in the past could have killed him and everyone else in his Black Ops Unit.

He was out cold before he hit the floor.

The attacker answered the phone that was now ringing incessantly.

"Hello Mr. Robert Kinsey, this is Potomac Home Security Systems. Our computers are showing that your alarms have gone off, do you wish us to send the police?"

Kinsey smiled down darkly at the body crumpled at the bottom of the stairs in satisfaction. He had been thinking about doing something about him lately with all this hit man business, and God had seen it fit to fulfill his wishes for him. It certainly saved him a lot of effort.

"No, no that won't be necessary. It was just a squirrel."

"Okay Sir. Have a nice night," he heard a click then the call ended.

"Yes, a very good night indeed."

Mwaa haa haa, so what do ya'll think? Please feed the author; her favorite food: reviews.


	13. Chapter 13

_Author's Note: _My laptop broke down, and I lost all the work that I had done on this chapter. My dad had a guy retrieve it for me, thanks Dad! I know that it has been a while since my last update, but I'll try to turn them out faster.

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Jack awoke, his head pounding as if something had it in a vice.

'Awe man,' he thought, 'what happened this time?' He was pretty sure that he now had a huge lump on the back of his head; though from what, he wasn't quite certain. His side was also killing him; it had felt like the stitches had been reopened. The last pain medication he had taken was shortly before they had arrived at Kinsey's house, and although he normally didn't depend on pain meds, he really wished he had some with him right then. He lifted his arm so he could rub the back of his neck to try and get out some of the kinks that had settled when he had been unconscious, but his arm never made it there. He tugged again, trying to ascertain why it wasn't doing what he wanted it to do until he realized that his arms were handcuffed behind his back.

'Okay. That's not good,' he thought.

He opened his eyes to have a look at his surroundings, but was met with blackness. Wherever he was, it was very dark…and cramped he realized when he was suddenly bounced upwards, where he hit his head on something that felt (and sounded) a lot like metal. Slowly becoming more alert as he pulled out of the haziness of unconsciousness, he was aware that he was moving, or to be more accurate: being moved. He heard the soothing sound of wind rushing by at a great speed; he felt tiny bumps every now and then, and realized with sudden clarity that he was in the trunk of a car.

'Crap, that's sooooo not good,' he corrected himself. He felt like shit, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The trunk was too small for him to move around in so he couldn't disable the taillights, especially with his arms tied behind his back, literally, and this car didn't have the handy, glow-in-the-dark 'pull this tab if you've accidentally locked yourself in your trunk' cord. There was nothing he could do but wait. After all, he was a patient man…not!

His thoughts had wandered to what Mac was doing, and where he was. The last thing he had known was that Mac had somehow disappeared, and the terror he remembered he had felt once more washed through him. He was being taken away from any chance he had of finding and going after his brother. There was no way he was going to let that happen.

As in vain and useless as it was, he began kicking and screaming, letting out pent-up rage at their situation.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Jack felt the change of movement and immediately knew when the car had turned onto the rocky, gravel road. His emotional release, if you would call it that, had left him wiped, and was so glad when the car stopped that he was finally going to be able to face something other than the darkness and his own thoughts.

He heard the driver's car door slam shut and the sound of footsteps as they moved away from the vehicle. 'No, come back you coward, let me out!' It seemed like he would have to wait a little longer in the cramped space, which was the last thing he wanted to do.

Jack had long since lost the feeling in his legs, and was worried about being able to move when the time came. His knees weren't the best, and tended to freeze up if the weren't moved often enough, and being stuffed in a trunk for who knows how long certainly fit the bill. He was about to start kicking and screaming again like a three year old; whatever it took to get him out of that damned trunk. He would much rather be somewhere where he at least had a chance to either fight back or escape, but he heard muffled voices and two sets of footsteps now approaching.

He couldn't hear exactly what they were saying, but by the sound of it, he could tell that they were distinctly male.

The scraping of metal on metal from the key entering the lock gave Jack the cue that his captors were going to let him out.

Bright light flooded the enclosed area, but Jack stubbornly refused to close his eyes, instead blinking rapidly as they teared from the onslaught.

"Get out!" yelled a harsh voice, one that he didn't recognize. He tried to see who it was, but his eyes hadn't adjusted yet. He started to do what he was told, but as he'd predicted: his knees had frozen up; they just hadn't been the same since _that_ mission.

Apparently, he hadn't been moving fast enough, because the new guy grabbed him roughly under the arms and dragged him out of the trunk with surprising strength.

"Ow!" _that_ had hurt.

With his arms still cuffed behind him, there was no way to steady himself when he legs gave out and dropped him like a sack of potatoes to lie in an ungainly heap on the ground.

"Get up!" snarled the familiar weasel-like voice, dripping with disgust.

"Well _Senator_, and I use that title loosely, it would help if you uncuffed me."

Kinsey snorted and turned his back, heading toward a building that looked like a miniature warehouse. The other guy, which Jack had now nicknamed Dumbo, as he could now see the man's unusually large ears, kicked him and gestured for him to follow.

Jack got up, and forced his wobbly legs under him to carry him after Kinsey. To his annoyance, a lone pebble had imprinted itself on his cheek, and he tried the whole way to the entrance to shrug it off. He almost let out a triumphant little 'woohoo' when he succeeded.

Once inside, he turned around to face his captors. His lips were formed in what was to be a sarcastic retort when something was slammed into his gut. Hard. Normally it wouldn't have, but the force of the impact sent him to his knees, having connected partially with his still unhealed stab wound.

'This is starting to become a habit,' he thought.

While he was preoccupied with trying to start breathing again, Dumbo had dragged him across the floor, and recuffed him to a thick pipe running vertically along a wall.

Coming from the shadows like the coward he was, Kinsey walked up to Dumbo with a false air of authority.

"What are you doing? Get it over with now, kill him."

Dumbo looked over at the Senator, an expression on his face that unsettled Jack's stomach. They weren't even bothering to lower their voices. They wanted him to know exactly what they had in store for him.

"Senator Kinsey, you called me here on short notice expecting me to clean up after you," the voice was cold as ice, and upon hearing it, a shiver ran down both men's spines, "but you lower being that you are, you don't understand that I do only that which I feel like. And I don't believe that I feel like wasting such a useful specimen." He turned his head toward Jack and slowly began to walk over, "Oh no…I have something much better in mind than simple death," he was now only a foot in front of Jack, an arrogant expression that Jack had seen working for the SGC too often, plastered on his face, "much, much better…"

And his eyes glowed.

Jack's blood froze in his veins, and he could have sworn that his heart had missed a beat. He was certain that he had just been sentenced to a fate that he wouldn't have wished on his worst enemies, a fate that had happened to him in his most horrible nightmares where he had woken up screaming with the sheets damp from a cold sweat.

And for the first time in a long while, Colonel Jonathon J O'Neill USAF was frightened for himself.

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Happy Birthday Fiddlefishgal! And once again, thanks Dad! This one's for ya'll.


	14. Chapter 14

_Previously:_

"_I'm not Jack! My name's MacGyver!" He shouted, angry, stunned and confused, "We have to go back for him. I'm not leaving him behind!"_

_Everyone was jerked forward when Daniel slammed on the breaks. There was stunned silence in the car, as Daniel, Carter, and Teal'c stared at the man they all had thought was their CO…_

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Pete and Murphy were the only ones who actually knew what was going on. Sort of. So it was amusing to see SG-1's reaction to Mac's dramatic outburst. Of course it would have been downright hysterical if it had not been for the circumstances of which this surprise had come to be revealed.

"What?!" Daniel was the first to regain their senses, "Is this some sick joke? It's not funny this time Jack!"

"I'm not Jack!" 'Why couldn't they just understand that?' "I'm MacGyver! Jack's my…" Mac hesitated, reluctant to reveal the truth, especially to his brother's friends. If he did the wrong thing, it could have horrible repercussions. 'Screw the damn secrecy.' He was tired of having to hide Jack's existence from his life, he felt robbed and cheated, and wasn't willing to have to continue it in the presence of people he knew for a fact his brother trusted. Besides, he was willing to risk it if it meant that they could go back to get Jack before this got any more FUBAR, to coin a phrase from the military man. "…Jack's my brother."

There, it was said and done, and he couldn't take it back. What happens next was entirely in their hands now.

"Bro- Brother?"

"The Colonel never mentioned he had a brother."

"O'Neill never discoursed of _any_ family."

"Well, here I am. I'll explain everything, better yet, _we'll_ explain everything once we go back and get Jack!"

This prompted Daniel to press the gas, pushing everyone, who had just flown forward, back into his or her seats. Each were quiet, busy with their own private thoughts, during the short car ride back to house which they had just fled.

'How the hell, could Jack not tell me he had a brother?' Daniel silently fumed. After all they had been through, they were supposed to be best friends. He knew that Jack was a private man, and most of his life was filed under Top Secret, but surely the existence of a brother- a twin brother- wasn't classified or need-to-know.

He had spoken to him about his family, and other painful topics like Sha're or his childhood, or lack of one. On many occasions they had stayed up well into the morning, drinking beer, talking- well Daniel did most of the talking, Jack had just sat there being supportive and understanding- but Jack had never reciprocated. Friendship was supposed to be about giving and receiving and Daniel had never been able to return the favor. The fact that Jack had kept something like MacGyver a secret from him angered him, but most of all it hurt. It hurt deep inside.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

She didn't know the Colonel as well as Daniel did- after all, they had been through everything together since the beginning- but she still felt hurt, like he didn't trust them.

'How could he keep something like a twin brother a secret? The General must surely have known. Somebody must have. All the military forms and background checks for security clearances… it's impossible to not know.'

Carter just couldn't wrap her mind around it, and soon found herself falling back on the familiar routine of a scientist's curiosity and analysis. It was easier to _ask_ questions than _to_ question. Who is MacGyver? Where did he come from? What's their story? Did the Colonel know he had a twin or is it something he just found out? Why did he keep him a secret?

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Teal'c was probably the only one who understood why O'Neill hadn't discussed this MacGyver with them. It was unwise to reveal possible weaknesses, even though you might be in safe company. After all, hadn't he done the same exact thing by neglecting to disclose the existence of his wife and son, Drey'auc and Ry'ac?

When he had revealed their existence and asked to return, O'Neill had supported him. He had convinced General Hammond to let him return to Chulak to save his son from getting implanted with his Prim'ta. He had wondered why he had been so forgiving of his deception, but now he understood.

Guilt.

It was a great motivator. O'Neill would have felt he was a hypocrite had he refused to help Teal'c because he had kept his family a secret. It must have struck a cord with the leader. He had looked a little preoccupied at times on the mission, most likely thinking about his brother.

Teal'c turned his head slightly to look at the man in the backseat behind him. He did indeed look very much like O'Neill, enough to have fooled him.

A twin. Daniel Jackson had explained what that Tau'ri term meant when he had taken him to a movie. He had been startled to see two versions of the same person, one in front of him and the other behind him in line for concessions. Daniel had fortunately gotten to him before he had made a scene. It wouldn't do to start talking about aliens and threaten young girls in public.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Mac sat quietly now, having said what he needed to in order to get back to Jack. He stared out the window, not wanting to meet the strangers' questioning gazes without his brother. He had an awful feeling in his gut that something was going horribly wrong. He knew it as soon as he left the Senator's house with alarms going off without Jack.

He had no idea what Jack was doing now. He hoped that he had made it out okay, but deep inside he knew that it wasn't the case this time.

'How did this get so complicated?' he asked himself.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Pete watched his best friend as emotions chased each other all over his face. Mac was nervous, the tension radiating off him in waves, and he couldn't help but absorb some of it through osmosis. He had rarely seen Mac so nervous, the guy had stared down some things without so much as breaking a sweat, where normal people would have wet their pants.

He had gone behind enemy lines on dangerous missions far more than anyone he knew, but when it came to family, he was constantly on edge. He remembered that when Harry, MacGyver's grandfather, was in the hospital Mac was constantly on the phone to check up on him. He was so protective of his family, now Pete knew, because he had very few left; in fact, Jack was the last.

He had wondered where Jack was when he had spotted Mac, and wanted to kick himself when Mac had shouted that they had left him behind at the house. They had practically condemned him, leaving him while triggering the alarm. Their only hope was to get back to the house in time to extract him and run like Hell.

'Poor Mac,' Pete, thought, 'He's been through so much. Why can't he catch a break?'

He turned to look at Murphy, who looked overwhelmed, but not as much as SG-1. She at least had known that Mac had a brother, after Pete told her of course. She kept looking at Mac with a sympathetic look in her eyes, almost as if she could make him feel better through pure will alone. Not that it would happen anytime soon, not until Mac could lay his eyes on his brother and make sure he was okay.

From the look on his face, it looked like he was expecting the worst.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The car ride back felt like forever, but barely had Daniel pulled up to the gaudy house when Mac burst through the car door like a racer who just heard the starting gun go off. He raced across the lawn and hurdle into the door, that was now unlocked, not a good sign, SG-1 and Murphy close behind.

Somewhere in his subconscious, Mac realized that the alarm had been turned off, but he was more intent on searching for any trace of Jack. Looking back on it, he would realize that it had been stupid and dangerous, barging in on their "enemy's" house like that. He stopped cold at the base of the stairs. A baseball bat was resting innocently against the banister. Picking it up, Mac's worst fears came true, there was a speck of blood. Not a lot, but enough to tell him what had happened: Jack was probably startled by the alarms and Kinsey got the drop on him.

"Damn it!" he cursed, and sped right back out through the door, pushing SG-1 aside. He knew that chances were Jack wasn't there anymore, which meant that he had no idea where he was anymore. Murphy silently trailed him, letting him have a little distance, but not letting her good friend out of her sight.

Pete had followed at a slower pace, and noticed something that no one else had: the garage door was open, but the thing that scared Pete was that it was empty. At the sight of Mac storming back through the door, he cleared his throat,

"Mac," that got his attention. He tilted his head towards the empty garage, the implications clear. Know he knew that there was no way to find out where Jack was, he had been transported in the little time that they had been separated.

At the sight, Mac felt a sudden rage fill him, a rage that was uncharacteristic in its intensity. A rage that, for some reason, Mac knew wasn't his alone. Without saying a word, he spun on his heels, and stalked over to the car that he had just seconds earlier vacated. Deep down he knew that he was being irrational, and that there was nothing that he could do, but he felt that he needed to do something, anything. He hopped into the drivers seat, ignoring shouts from both Pete and the bespectacled man he now knew as Daniel, and didn't even register the second door closing.

He had no idea where he was going, a common theme he noticed, but drove anyway. He needed to think. Where would Kinsey have taken his brother?

"Mac?" Though the voice was quiet, he jumped; startled that somebody else was with him. He turned his head to his right and found Detective Kate Murphy sitting beside him in the passenger seat. He tried to get a hold of his emotions and returned his eyes back to the road.

"Mac?" she tried again, hoping this time for an answer, "Where are you going?"

He sighed a heavy breath. It sounded to her like he was closed to being pushed to his limits in the stress department. Worrying about someone you cared about was like that. Normally, she tried to put off a "you can't hurt me" attitude at work, just so no one would see how much she really cared on the inside. She recognized the almost lost look in Mac's eyes; she had seen it in the mirror often enough when her Dad was in the hospital for cancer. She had ate, slept, and drank the hospital only to be heart broken when the end came. Family was important, and sometimes it was all you had, all that kept you going in your darkest moment.

Yes, she understood quite well, the insatiable urge to do anything just for the sake of doing it, knowing that it wouldn't help at all except maybe to ease your nerves or distract them for a few precious moments. But he had something that she never had: a friend, a shoulder to lean on, her.

Mac refused to meet her gaze, instead choosing the easy way out by keeping his eyes on the road, though not really paying attention. Where was he going? What had he been hoping to do?

"I don't know," he murmured almost inaudibly to himself, "I don't know," he said louder, so Murphy could hear.

Kate knew that right now silence was the best answer. Her friend needed to think some things out, and when he would need someone to talk to, she would be there.

After a long while of complete and utter silence, MacGyver pulled over to the side of the road. They were out in the middle of nowhere. He had turned when he felt like it, just letting his instincts guide him. He felt so helpless, and it was starting to get to him. When he was out in the field or on missions for Phoenix or the DXS, he was always right in the thick of things. He didn't always have a plan, but he was _very_ good at improvising.

The one thing that he made sure of on any mission of his, however, was that he was right in the thick of things. Right where you didn't have time to feel sorry about yourself or mourn lost comrades; his focus was on getting it over with and everyone home safe. He hated the time between assignments: that was when you had time to think. He and Jack had many a conversation about that. It was one of the reasons why he tried to become as active as possible, learning how to play guitar, paint, volunteer, work on some new tech, or something that would keep him from thinking about the assignments that went wrong.

Feeling overwhelmed, he crossed his arms over the steering wheel and gently layed his forehead on them, resting for a minute so he could collect himself and regroup. He heard a swish of fabric, the telltale that Murphy repositioned her body so that she could face him, preparing herself for a talk. But it wasn't to happen.

As Mac lifted his head to speak, a sudden wave a terror rushed through him, surprising him. Similar to the anger he had felt earlier, it didn't feel like it had originated from himself. He didn't know why he was suddenly shaking and sweating, his heart beating a mile a minute. The fright must have been evident on his face for Kate became concerned herself,

"Mac? Mac, what is it? Are you alright?"

He didn't even hear her, his thought once again focused inside. This was worse than the way he felt with heights; this was pure. But he didn't understand why he experienced it right at that moment. There was nothing to-

Then an image sprang forth from the deep abyss in his mind. An image that disgusted him and sent shivers down his spine.

"Jack!"


	15. Chapter 15

_Author's note_: This chapter contains spoilers for many episodes in both seasons one and two in Stargate, and some for MacGyver.

And this chapter is for my mom, it's her birthday on Sunday. Happy Birthday Mom! I Love you!

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"Jack?" Detective Murphy repeated in confusion. But MacGyver didn't answer; in fact it looked like he was completely catatonic, at least to her. But he wasn't, not on the inside.

Mac looked around and found himself surrounded by a familiar darkness that defined the 'Zone'. The brothers had often found themselves in this safe haven when they were both unconscious, but it was extremely rare to be able to meet here when one or both were awake, and it meant that something _really_ bad was happening or about to happen. So, feeling on edge and cautious, Mac slowly turned around, searching for Jack. He knew he had to be there somewhere. As he turned, he realized that behind him images were being projected as if they were a film in a movie theater, images that were gruesome and disgusting.

A common theme among them was a snake-like creature Mac had never seen before. It repulsed him with its beady red eyes and slimy fangs.

'This must be what Jack's thinking about right now,' Mac thought, it was the only reason why he was there and Jack wasn't.

He wanted to turn away from the images, as they were disturbing, but they switched to something he knew was more horrific for his brother. The images now included visions of a young boy wearing a mixture of olive colored BDU's and desert robes. He smiled coldly at him and unfurled his hand to reveal some weird jewelry with a red stone in his palm, and instantly Mac felt a pain emanate from his gut and ripple through his body. It was similar to being punch really hard, by someone with a fist the size of an eighteen-wheeler. The boy's eyes glowed.

Then the image changed.

The same boy was now towering over a figure dressed in all black, which was on his knees and looked to be in intense pain. There was a light orange…beam… emanating from the strange piece of jewelry the boy was wearing again, and closer inspection proved that the man in black was Daniel, a friend of Jack's he had only just met. Out of the right corner of the "screen" appeared a gun being held by a hand whose thumbs had the telltale sign of breakages in the past. An unsettling feeling developed in the pit of his stomach as he guessed what was going to happen.

"Skaraa! Skaraa…. Don't! Skaraa!" Jack's voice echoed through the zone, it's anguish clearly evident.

Then, the shots rang out.

Mac flinched, his mind taking him back to an incident in his youth that had forever sworn him away from the weapon that had haunted him through his life.

He didn't know what the relation was between this Skaraa and his twin, but he cold tell by the tone in his voice that the pulling the trigger had definitely taken something away from him.

Then the images changed again, this time coming quickly as if in fast forward.

Major Carter, the pretty blonde that was on Jack's team with Daniel, was behind bars, surrounded with dull gray walls. Her eyes glowed as well.

A black man, old and dying, strapped to a bed with thick leather restraints. Armed guards in the background. His eyes glowed as he spat out hateful phrases in a language that was definitely not English.

A woman with flaming red hair, teasing him with one of the disgusting…snake-like creatures, her eyes glowing as well.

An ugly…monster, that lifted Jack up off the ground by his throat; his eyes glowed.

Mac was starting to get the point that glowing eyes were bad.

He could feel Jack's hatred and disgust; it was begining to overwhelm him as the changing memories (he now realized that's what they were) picked up speed. He had to get to his brother before he became lost in the past,

"Jack!" he cried out, "Jack, come on! Stop! Talk to me! Jack!" he cried out into the darkness.

"Mac?" The slideshow of memories were now replaced by his brother, for which he was grateful. He ran to him and enveloped him in a supportive hug. He was worried about him, and the bleak tone in his voice confirmed his fears. Jack was scared, and so was he. He had just been given a window into Jack's life that he had found frightening, and he felt bad that he hadn't tried to contact his brother during these past years when he certainly had needed someone to talk to or to comfort him. But he was here now, and he would do what he could to make up for it, but first things first. He stepped back, and looked his brother in the eye, keeping his hands on his shoulders in support.

"Jack, what happened? Where are you?"

Seeing Mac, his eyes lost the cloudiness similar to the first moments of coming back to reality after having a particularly bad nightmare, which Mac realized, was exactly what this was. Jack shrugged off his brother's hands while answering.

"It was that damn SOB Kinsey! He got the drop in me and knocked me out. I came to in a freakin' trunk!"

"Jack, where are you?"

"How the hell should I know?! I couldn't see squat!"

"Jack…"

He let out a sigh, visibly trying to get a handle on his anger. After a moment, he responded,

"I don't know. There was a gravel road, and they let me out at some small warehouse out in the middle of nowhere, no landmarks, no nothing. They tied me up and… they…" he gulped as if trying to hold down his lunch.

"Jack, what did they do to you?"

"Nothing…yet," it felt like he was pulling teeth, trying to figure what they were doing to Jack, so he tried something different. Those images had to have something to do with what was going on.

"What are those snakes with glowing eyes?"

Jack visibly flinched as he looked up at his brother. 'How the hell did he know!?'

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Kinsey tried to slowly back away while the Goa'uld was threatening the idiot Colonel. He was just as surprised and scared as he was for he hadn't known that the man was anything but human. The man in front of him, the one that he had contacted, was part of a secret agency that he belonged to. He had a good reputation for specializing in…ehem dirty deeds, so Kinsey had called him to get rid of a most annoying thorn in his side.

He wasn't stupid, as some people thought; he knew that a Goa'uld symbiote was dangerous; it was his main reason for fighting to shut down the Stargate Program. But how the hell did one get onto Earth? And why this man? If he was implanted, then surely others higher up in the agency were as well. That thought scared him.

He was only a few steps away when the Goa'uld turned his attention towards him.

"Where are you going?"

He tried to speak, but only a pitiful squeak came out so he cleared his throat and tried to put as much self-confidence in his voice as possible. See, being in Congress _was_ good for you.

"Nowhere. I just thought you might like some time alone with…" He cleared his throat again while making an obscure gesture towards O'Neill. He had gone from being the one in charge to becoming an underling, and he hated it. It was time for him to think of something to get himself out of this.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Murphy had been trying to rouse her friend, MacGyver, for a few minutes but had given up when it was clear her efforts were in vain. Mac had just frozen and nothing she could do could reach him. The blank look on his face made her nervous.

A feeling grew inside her that said she should get help, so she leaned over into the backseat where she had left her purse to reach her cell phone, and started to dial Pete's number.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

He was sitting on the curb, listening to the three members of O'Neill's team arguing over what to do next when his leg started to vibrate. The sudden weird feeling startled him and he let out a small yelp of surprise. It took him a few second to realize that it wasn't his leg beeping, but his cellular phone was ringing. He pulled out the technological marvel and pressed the appropriate buttons to accept the call.

"Thornton-"

"Pete, It's me Kate," He had forgotten that he could just call her to find out their location. Cell phones were still a new concept to him. Mac had laughed at him many times saying that he needed to move into the new century instead of keeping his head in the sand.

"Kate! Where are you? You and Mac just took off!" At his statement, Daniel and Carter immediately ceased their conversation and listened in on the call.

Murphy quickly relayed the route Mac had taken.

"Pete...something's wrong with MacGyver,"

"What?" Pete was nervous, 'Now what happened to him?' he thought.

"He just...he just stopped,"

"Stopped?"

"He won't move, he won't speak, he doesn't respond when I talk to him or touch him... he's just...well, frozen,"

'Frozen!? What the hell?'

"What happened? Did he see something?"

"No, he just-" Murphy was getting frustrated; no one knew what was going on. She hated not knowing something or not being in control. She was in the middle of answering Pete when she saw Mac's eyes blink. She pulled the phone away from her ear, ignoring Pete's shouts from the other end.

"Mac? You okay?" He shook his head as if trying to shake of the last dregs of whatever had held him in its grasp. "Mac?" he looked up at her and she saw the glassiness that was in eyes dissolve, leaving the familiar, caring, dark eyes in its stead.

"Yeah, Murph," he saw the phone in her hand," is that Pete?" He didn't wait for her to respond; instead he took the phone from her. He was acting as if this were an everyday occurrence, whereas she just sat there in shock over the abruptness of his change. "Pete?" he asked in between the other man's ranting. Its effect was immediate, he quieted.

"Mac? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, listen to me, I know where Jack is."

"You do? Where is he?" Carter, Daniel, and Teal'c all visibly perked up, coming to the same, and correct, conclusion that they were talking about O'Neill.

"Well, I don't know where exactly, but I know how to get there," he said as he opened the door to the car and climbed out, Murphy mimicking his own movements, "look, you just have to trust me. We don't have much time!" He paused, waiting to hear Pete's confirmation.

If there was one thing he did, it was trust his friend, MacGyver. After all the years that they had worked together, Mac had more than proven to him that his trust was well placed, heck, he had saved his life on several accounts.

"Yeah I do...so what's the plan?" Mac allowed himself a brief smile before tossing the phone over the hood of the car to Murphy, who caught it skillfully.

"Tell him where we are, and stay on the phone with him, updating him on our location. We're walking from here on out."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Pete told SG-1 the directions that Kate had previously relayed to him as they crossed the street to the car that Mac and Jack had arrived in, not an hour earlier. Carter opened the driver's door and to her surprise, the keys were still in the ignition.

"They weren't planning on staying long, and they needed a quick getaway," Pete explained.

"Makes it easier for us. I'll drive, I know a shortcut to where they are," she said as she started the car. As she had told the Colonel once, these were her old stomping grounds from when she was assigned to the Pentagon. Pete took the front seat next to her as Daniel and Teal'c piled in the back. She quickly put the car in gear and sped off even as Daniel slammed his door shut.

"Okay Kate, we're on our way."


	16. Chapter 16

_Author's Note: _I know, this chapter is looooong over due, but RL has been throwing me for a loop lately. I hope you enjoy, and remember: I love reviews.

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"How do you know where you're going?" Murphy asked Mac as she roughly pushed away a twig that had caught on her jacket. She held the cell phone in one hand, her constant connection to Pete, while she followed her friend through the untamed terrain. MacGyver was leading her at a hard pace, eager to reach his brother in time. She debated asking the question again when it became clear that he hadn't heard her, but he effectively stopped her by answering. The question had taken much longer than normal to sink in, his reflexes and reactions slowed down because he had reopened the link to Jack after he had spoken to Pete. It was something they had never tried before, and it was dangerous because Mac was preoccupied with keeping the Zone open instead of being aware of his own surroundings.

"I don't," the words came slowly, as if the words had to struggle through quicksand before they were able to be spoken, "I…just…I feel it. Like a signal getting stronger," it was the only way he knew how to describe it. The weak hold he had on Jack gradually increased its strength as he got closer, and that feeling was the only thing that told him that they were going in the right direction.

Mac's answer had confused Murphy even more, he had just started speaking, barely slowing down, and not even turning around to talk to her. Something weird was definitely going on, only she didn't know what. The only thing that kept her going was the utmost belief in Mac's posture that he knew what he was doing. If Mac was sure, then she had no choice but to be sure as well. They had worked together often enough where Mac had gone out on a limb, and succeeded, for her to be able to continue on pure faith alone; something that, until she had met Mac, she had been unable to do.

Murphy turned her attention to Pete, who had remained on the phone. She could hear their own conversation in the background, quietly spouting their own theories about Mac, along with where Jack was.

"Pete?" she asked quietly, not wanting to distract MacGyver from his task.

"Yeah?"

"What do you think is really going on? I mean… well, you've met his brother, what are they like together? I've never met any of Mac's family. I've never even heard him talk about it, heck, I didn't know he had any…"

"I have no idea what's going on with Mac. I've only seen him with Jack once before all hell broke loose…"

MacGyver tuned out Murphy's voice after he realized that she was no longer talking to him. After his lapse in concentration to answer her, Mac found it somewhat easier than before to find Jack again. He reached out with his mind and sighed with relief as Jack rejoined him. Everything seemed so much clearer as well.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Jack O'Neill stared boldly ahead as the Goa'uld taunted him about his ultimate demise and whatnot. His brother's presence in the back of his mind help to calm him tremendously, and he know found himself comforted in the knowledge that Mac wouldn't let him get snaked. He frowned when he thought about how he had to reveal the existence of such evil to his younger sibling; he had hoped that Mac would never have to know. It wasn't that Jack had never wanted to tell him, how many times had he picked up the phone with the intention of calling Mac, but he wanted to protect him from the constant worry of aliens showing up and annihilating the planet.

'God,' he mused, 'My life sounds like some cheesy sci-fi 'B' movie.'

"Jack, you still with me?" Mac's voice resonated in his head.

"Yeah Mac, still here,"

"Good, just checking you know,"

"Ya can't get rid of me that easily,"

"Aw, shuc-" Mac's voice cut off in the middle of his response, and Jack felt his absence from a place deep inside of him.

"Mac? Mac?! You okay?" 'What happened? Did he get caught? Was he hurt?' Jack struggled against his bonds, trying vainly to somehow get free so he could find Mac. Different scenarios ran through his mind of what had occurred to his twin, none of which were pretty.

The Goa'uld smiled coldly, falsely thinking that the prisoner's agitation was caused by his maniacal taunts. Jack didn't see it when he walked over to a table to pick up a long object resembling a cattle prod.

Jack's struggles ceased and his racing heart calmed when he felt his brother join with him again. He closed his eyes to try to focus on their connection.

"Mac, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED! Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he sheepishly replied, "I…tripped. I think I found your gravel road."

Jack sighed as relief flooded him. When he showed up, he was going to wring his neck! How dare he scare him like that, he almost gave him a heart attack.

"Good," he glanced at Mr. Baddy himself and something in his stomach churned at the cold smile he had on his face, "I don't like the way this snakehead is looking at me. I think you should pick up the pace," he told Mac.

Then Jack noticed what he was holding in his hand. "Oh shit," he said both to Mac and aloud. "Mac hurry!"

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"Mac hurry!"

Uh oh, he didn't like Jack's tone of voice, not one bit.

"Murphy, how far away is Pete?" He waited, shifting nervously from foot to foot as she repeated the question on the phone.

He never got to hear her answer when suddenly, a white hot pain shot through him, searing every nerve ending he had in his body. He doubled over and fell to the ground, screaming and writhing in agony. He had been shot many times before, but this was a pain that was completely new to him.

Murphy saw him go down and, startled, she dropped her phone and went to help him. She tried to find out what was wrong, but she just didn't understand it. Nothing was wrong with him, yet he was screaming like he was being burned alive.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Yellow light poured out from underneath his eyelids and from his mouth, opened to let out a pain filled cry. The pain was excruciating, but nothing new. A Goa'uld pain stick was a device that, unfortunately, had been used on him many a time.

He knew that he and Mac were still connected; he could feel his agony. Doing the only thing that he could do to protect his younger brother, he began to shut down the Zone, to block Mac from getting back in, to protect him from the suffering that he himself was about to endure.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

As suddenly as it had started, the pain turned off, leaving a dull ache from its memory. MacGyver lay stunned for a few moments, his pulse racing, lungs heaving, and limbs shaking from the overload of his senses. After he had caught his breath, he tried to reach out to Jack to find out what happened and if he was all right, but he couldn't get through. It was as if he had put up a brick wall, preventing him from joining him in the zone. Mac tried to break it down so he could maybe take away some of the pain, but Jack had had a lot of practice building walls. A mason couldn't have done better.

He cautiously stood up, finding no residual effects from his experience, he turned to Murphy who looked stunned.

"Wha, wha, what just happened?"

But he ignored her completely. It was now more important than ever to get to Jack, their time was running out.

"Tell Pete to hurry," he barked at her as he started off down the gravel road. Though no longer guided by their connection in the Zone, he had found the road that Jack was taken on. He could just follow that to his location.

"Uh, Mac," He paused, turned, at followed her gaze to where her cell phone now lay in pieces on the ground, "I think I dropped it."

He let out a large exhale of breath as he quickly thought up what to do.

"Stay here and wait for Pete and Jack's team, he should be on his way. Tell them to follow this path; they should come upon some sort of warehouse type building. Find that, find us." And he took off, running for all he was worth. The sooner he got to Jack, the less pain, and the better.

There was nothing Kate could do but sit and wait. Though her heart told her to follow Mac and help him, her mind told her that the best thing to do was to direct the backup to where it was needed when they arrived.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

He crouched behind an expensive looking black Lincoln town car, searching the premises for any threat. The car stuck out like a sore thumb beside the abandoned building. He couldn't hear anything, and he wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. He approached the door on the side of the building and cautiously cracked it open. He could see where Jack lay handcuffed to a pipe at the other end of the warehouse. Two men stood about midpoint between the two brothers. One, a man he didn't recognize was showing something in an organ transport container to his companion, someone he was familiar with. Even from this distance, he could tell that Senator Kinsey was afraid of whatever was in that box.

Realizing that there was no way he could waltz right in and grab his older brother and leave, he made to return back outside to think up a distraction, when movement caught his eye.

Jack was slowly but surely recovering from the inflicted torture of the pain stick. The worse thing about it was that the Goa'uld had brought to the brink of losing consciousness before he stopped, not letting him sink into the comforting embrace of oblivion. He had crowed that it would soften him up or the blending, a word that made him sick to his stomach.

He had lifted his head up to watch his captors when he noticed someone crouched by the door. His eyes widened in recognition and he practically sighed in relief, but didn't. it wouldn't do to give away his rescuer when he had come so close.

Their eyes met and they shared a silent conversation, each reassuring the other that all was well and it would be over soon. Mac gestured outside and out his finger to his lips in the universal sign for quiet. Jack just nodded once slowly in response before his eyes wandered back to their original targets.

The younger of the two slipped away and began to search for some, anything, he could use to create a distraction so he could free Jack. He circled the building looking for a shack that might hold chemicals or stored equipment, but there was nothing.

'How can there not be anything?' he thought in disbelief, 'There has to be something! Think MacGyver think! You can do this.'

He desperately scanned the area hoping to spot something he might have missed the first times, but he hadn't. It seemed like his luck had finally worn out. Frustration began to kick in for all he saw was the warehouse itself, and two cars; one the town car, and the other a black sedan parked over by the tree line.

'Wait a minute,' he looked back at the cars, 'No…I couldn't…but maybe…' He jogged over to the town car and slid underneath, just barely being able to clear his upper torso. It was a tight fit, but he quickly found what he was looking for.

Mac reached down into his pants pocket for his Swiss army knife, and opened it to produce a corkscrew. He knew that what he was about to do was very risky, and would happen very quickly, but he had no choice. Jack had shown him exactly what was at stake. He didn't want to lose his brother like that. He reached over to where the gas tank was, and carefully lined up his knife at just the right angle, and using his other hand as a hammer, he shoved the corkscrew in. Immediately fluid began to pour down the knife, falling to ground directly underneath.

Mac scrambled out from under the car, closed the knife and replaced it in its rightful place. He patted his pants down, searching for the matchbook that he always carried with him, but he couldn't find it. He couldn't believe it! It must have slipped out earlier at the house.

'Damn,' he didn't have time to waste, so thinking quickly he opened the car door and pushed the button on the cigarette lighter. While waiting for that to heat up, he opened the glove compartment and rifled through it, looking for anything flammable. He pulled out a copy of the insurance and registration.

'Oh well, he won't need it anyway after I'm done.'

He pulled out the lighter and held the paper to it. It took a few seconds for it to ignite, but the moment it did, he leaped out the car and placed the burning paper in the growing pool of gasoline. It quickly lit, the flames licking at his hand for a split second before he pulled away.

He didn't even turn back as he ran. He went as fast as his legs would go, trying to get as far away from ground zero as he could. He hid right beside the door, trying to flatten himself as much as he could, practically becoming part of the wall in the process. He had just gotten into position when a massive explosion rocked the area. The heat was so intense that he could feel its burn on his face. He felt the resounded shockwave reverberate through his body and the building he was leaning against. There was surprisingly little debris, just a lot of flame.

His stunt had the desired effect as two men promptly emerged from the warehouse, come to see what had happened. As they watched, stunned, Mac slid behind them into the building and ran to the far end where Jack was currently trying to stand, his hands still behind his back.

"You never could resist blowing something up could you?" Jack whispered harshly, not wanting to alert the captors that the prisoner was about to break free. Mac smiled at his brother's retort.

"Nope, and you can't resist to piss of the bad guys!" Jack wanted to say, 'Neither can you,' but he decided that it was more important to get out of there than to argue. Instead, he turned slightly and lifted up his arms, "You don't happen to have the key do you?" he asked.

Mac shook his head while he once again pulled out his knife, this time removing from the side a metal toothpick, "Hold still," and he proceeded to pick the lock while Jack stood impatiently. The click confirming that he was now free seemed too loud in the warehouse, but none of them paid it any heed. MacGyver noticed that Jack seemed to be favoring his right leg and there were pain lines furrowing his forehead.

"Can you walk?"

"I think so," but Mac wouldn't risk it. He pulled his left arm around his shoulder and put his own right arm around his brother's waist, taking some of his weight and supporting him. He heard him wince at the motion.

"What else Jack?"

"I think I reopened the stitches on my side. It ah…hurts…a bit,"

"Sorry, I forgot about that. The moment we get outta here, you're going to a hospital. No buts or exceptions," this time Jack didn't protest and that bothered him somewhat. Though they both hated hospitals, they were a necessity sometimes… sometimes.

"Is there another exit, a back door maybe?" Mac really didn't want to risk going back out through the front. HE was lucky once, he might not be so a second time.

"I didn't see one,"

"Damn," looked like they weren't going to have a choice. They headed towards the door, but only made it a few feet before a mechanical voice echoed weirdly through the warehouse,

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!" Both brothers' heads shot up and they found themselves staring into the cold face the Goa'uld from across the floor. Jack silently muttered a curse under his breath upon being discovered.

"What are you screaming about, there's no possible way he could…" Kinsey had entered behind him and trailed off when he saw Mac and Jack. He stared confusedly at the two twins, his eyes darting from one to the other.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Kinsey had been forced to watch while the Goa'uld prepared the symbiote for implantation with a growing sense of unease. Just the sight of the thing made him squirm with disgust. Everything was quiet until suddenly a loud explosion resounded through the warehouse.

They had both run outside to see what had happened when he saw his car in flames.

"My car!" he cried. 'What the hell happened?' He didn't know what was going on. Surely there was no such thing as spontaneous combustion. That meant that someone was here, but whom? And why would they bomb his car? He had turned around, when he heard his cohort yelling at someone in the warehouse. The only person in there was the bumbling idiot and sorry disgrace of the United States, and he was tied up and barely conscious. He walked inside and stopped at the sight that beheld him.

Standing there were two Jack O'Neills!

"What the Hell?!"

Now he was in his own personal Hell! For some stupid reason, aliens liked to make copies of him, and apparently Stargate Command missed one.

No, this Xerox was different somehow, he wasn't sure how, but it was.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

'Shit shit shit, why couldn't this have been easy for once?' Something was always going wrong, and Jack was sick and tired of it. He sagged in Mac's arms, part out of defeat, and part out of exhaustion. Now how were they going to get out of this? He looked up at his younger sibling.

Now he had gone and brought him into trouble as well. He mentally kicked himself in the butt for being so weak, for being a complete idiot. If he hadn't been distracted, he would have never put them both in this position. He knew better than to let his guard down, especially on a mission. All this was his fault. He just hoped that somehow a miracle would happen and Mac would be able to escape unscathed.


	17. Chapter 17

They had all seen the explosion shortly after the two groups reunited. Upon witnessing the fireball, Pete had exclaimed with pride,

"That's Mac! I know his work when I see it!" As far as he was concerned, no one could make an explosion quite like Mac could.

After the initial shock had worn off, they had taken off in its direction, using the smoke as a beacon.

It hadn't taken them long to arrive at their destination, and they now were behind the sparse cover that the thinning tree line gave them, scanning the area for any unknown enemy they would have to neutralize. Upon seeing none, Carter motioned with her hand for Daniel and Teal's to spread out and take the flanks while she headed down the middle to peek through the door to see what was going on inside the building.

Kate and Pete looked at each other, amazed at the three's swift movements. It was obvious to them that they were used to working together under similar conditions. There was no way these three, make it four, were involved in Deep Space Radar Telemetry, as their cover stated.

At Carter's nod, they all drew their weapons. She sent Teal'c and Daniel ahead to check around the building, and when they came back, they signaled the 'all clear'.

Pete and Kate, not wanting to be left out, followed slightly behind, not wanting to get in their way if there was to be a shoot out.

Carter slightly opened the door just enough for her to see inside with being seen herself. She gasped at what she saw.

MacGyver and Colonel O'Neill were on their knees at the far end of the warehouse, with a man bending over them. He had a Goa'uld hand device! She watched helplessly as both he and Kinsey questioned the brothers. Apparently, they were both startled at the emergence of MacGyver.

"Who are you?" she heard the man say, his dual-toned voice giving him away as being a Goa'uld. They both refused to answer. The Goa'uld lifted his arm menacingly, the gold of the device glittering in a mockery of its capability of intense pain and death. He activated it on MacGyver, slowly beginning to scramble his brains.

She could hear him trying to contain his screams while his brother struggled against the bonds he had just recently been placed in again. He screamed out in rage, cursing the Goa'uld and the Senator, threatening them in futility of a slow and painful death.

She couldn't take much more of watching the scene playing out before her, herself being on the unfortunate receiving end of a hand device, and therefore knowing the pain he was suffering. She stood up and charged through the door, Daniel and Teal'c directly behind her.

Her appearance distracted the Goa'uld enough that the device deactivated as he brought it up to fend off the new attackers.

SG-1 had faced down plenty of Goa'uld before, and killed some as well, so they weren't fazed a bit. They opened fire, each emptying no less than half a clip into its body. The Goa'uld, not being a major system lord, but only a stray symbiote had not had access to the latest technology. His hand device didn't have the nifty personal shield, which made their job oh so much easier.

The main threat eliminated, Daniel ran over to Jack, cutting the plastic zip ties that had bound him to a thick pipe by the wall. Upon freedom, he crawled the few feet to where his brother lay, retching. He pushed Pete out of his way and hung on to him, murmuring quiet words of encouragement, trying to bring him out of the pain.

It had hurt him just as much as it had hurt Mac; He had to sit there and watch his brother being tortured, and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Shh, it's okay Mac, it's okay, he's dead," Mac had stopped retching and was slowly recuperating. He looked up into his brother's eyes and tried to reassure him that he was okay, or if he wasn't he would soon be.

"Crap…that…really does…hurt," he said in between gasps. Jack smiled and drew his younger brother into a hug, relieved.

Pete who had also been worried was comforted at the attempt of humor and gratefully patted his friend on the back,

"MacGyver, don't you do that to me again, ya wanna give me a coronary?!"

Senator Kinsey's head whipped around at the mention of that name. He had not been forgotten in the prior confusion, much to his dismay. He had found himself warily staring down the wrong end of a gun. Teal'c had been careful to not let the malefactor out of his sight.

"MacGyver," Kinsey muttered in disbelief, he couldn't believe it. But MacGyver, the one who he had been tipped was going to catch him with his hand in the cookie jar, was human. He had read his file, there was no way he could be the product of a tryst with an alien. That meant that there had to be a logical reason why the two men he despised most at the moment were identical. Twins? A deep anger coursed through him at the thought,

"MACGYVER!" he bellowed in rage, "How the Hell!" it seemed to be his choice phrase for the day, "You're supposed to be dead! You are like the Colonel here, you never know quite when to give up and _die_!" The revulsion was dripping from his every word.

The twins' heads shot up toward the Senator; they had forgotten that he was still there.

Teal'c struck the man down at the insult to his friend. He was angered at the insult that was directed to someone he considered his own brother.

Kinsey went down in an undignified heap, and crawled away as he saw the big alien dauntingly approach him. He kept crawling until his back found a wall.

"I will not tolerate that language from such an inferior being about O'Neill and his kin. You shall not dare speak that way again," he snarled.

Jack tried to stand, and only made it up with the help of Mac and Daniel. He walked slowly to where Teal'c had cornered Kinsey, a cold glint to his eyes. Though Kinsey hadn't physically harmed either of them like the Goa'uld had, he hadn't forgotten that he _did_ order the hit on his brother, which had started the whole mess.

The Senator tried to sit up, gathering all of his anger to use as a mask to hide all his fear.

The threat had to be eliminated, there was no way he could risk losing his brother again.

He took the gun from Daniel's hand before he had a chance to stop him, and leveled it at Kinsey, the motion pulling at the still unhealed wound in his side. The Senator shivered when he saw the cold hatred in O'Neill's eyes. He had no doubt that he would kill him, the consequences be damned.

"Jack!"

"Mac, shut up, let me do it!"

"NO! Jack don't,"

"He deserves it!" he stated with hard conviction.

"Yes he does, but you don't," the sincerity in his brother's voice finally reached him. He clenched his jaw to keep himself from loosing it. He knew Mac was right, and that made him angrier, he really wanted to kill the SOB. "Jack, don't do this to yourself. I...I need you, we just found each other again, if you do this, I'll lose you…I don't want to lose you," Mac slowly approached Jack and put his hand on his twin's shoulder and gently squeezed, "Jack...look at me," and he did. Mac could see the pain, hatred and anger in his eyes. He could also see how utterly tired and exhausted he was, "put the gun down, bro."

Jack lowered the gun and turned to look at Mac for a second before spinning around and squeezing off a round toward the senator. The shot echoed loudly throughout the warehouse, everyone frozen in astonishment. Mac's jaw dropped as he stared at Kinsey, who sat petrified like a deer caught in the headlights.

"If you harm my family again, go anywhere near them, if you so much as _think _about them, I _promise_ you I will _not_ miss again," Jack growled dangerously. He spun on his heels and limped through the door. Mac hurried after him, leaving Kinsey to do a close imitation of a guppy while staring at the hole in the wall, not three inches from his head.

As soon as Jack stepped through the door, all the ire and anger left and the exhaustion overwhelmed him as if the dam holding it back had broken, sending a raging torrent crashing down towards him. All his strength left him the moment he was out of sight of everyone else. Mac got there just in time to catch him from falling as his knees buckled, and slowly eased him down to the ground. The gun slipped out of his hand as the stress from the past week caught up with them both.

They both sat there supporting each other, feeling emotionally and physically drained. It was over; they were all safe.

"We gotta stop doing this, people will talk," Jack quipped exhaustedly.

"Yeah, well, it's all your fault,"

"My fault? Since when is it my fault?"

"Since the beginning," Mac countered. Jack had nothing to say to that so he pulled away and looked at his younger brother. He layed his hand on the back of his neck and slightly patted him before he stood up.

"Come on, let's go home."

"Sure thing Jack, I feel like I could sleep for a week," the colonel gave him a weird look and let him slip an arm around his shoulders to help him walk.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

"I think I like that Doctor Frasier," Mac stated as he walked through the threshold and into Jack's home.

"That's because you weren't the one she had her attention on. She's an honest to god Napoleonic Power Monger…"

"You're just sore because she isn't afraid of you…"

"…Blood sucking vampire…" Jack continued as he limped into the kitchen and pulled out a beer.

"...In fact, it sorta looked to me like you're afraid of her. And those nurses…" Mac skipped past the kitchen and went down the couple steps into the den and took a seat on the couch, propping his feet up on the coffee table.

"…Sadistic demon in a white coat…" Jack came out of the kitchen and landed heavily next to his brother on the couch, letting out a muffled groan when his ribs protested the action.

"…know you too well Jack. They treat you just like you're supposed to be treated: like a little kid." As Jack popped the cap off the beer and brought to his lips, Mac intercepted it and smoothly placed the bottle out of reach, wagging his finger at him.

"Hey… little midget wolf in sheep's clothing…"

"Ya done yet?"

"Nope. Oppressive slave driver …"

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Well, that's all folks! I hope you enjoyed it. I sincerely thank all of you who have followed this story from the begining and patiently waited for me to update time and time again. Thanks be also to all of you who reviewed my story and gave me words of advice and encouragement. Until next time!


	18. Sequel Preview

You guys asked for it, now ya'll get it. The sequel to Brothers in Arms is now up and being posted. I hope that those of you who have enjoyed my story will also enjoy this one as well. Go check it out!

Preview to the sequel:

The Handbasket Vacation:

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

… As he traversed the hall, something flashing caught the corner of his eye. He turned to see that his answering machine's red light was indeed blinking, informing him that _someone_ had called him while he was away.

He debated whether or not to save it for later.

He looked longingly down the hall, his bedroom door beckoning him, and then he turned to look at the ominous red blinking light. Once more he turned towards his room before,

"Aw, for cryin' out loud!"

He angrily punched the button on the machine, blaming it for delaying his shut-eye.

"You have six new messages…"

'Wow, only six?' he thought. He was gone for a whole month and only six people called him. He felt slightly miffed, but then realized that the most important calls he would get would have most likely been SGC personnel, and they would have would have known that he was either on base or off world and would have gotten a hold of him accordingly.

"First new message," he mocked sarcastically, timing it perfectly so as to harmony with the machine.

One message was a wrong number and consisted of a "Darn it, she gave me the wrong number, _click_". He had to smile at that one: poor guy. The next was a telemarketer asking him if he would like to buy life insurance for a new low price! How ironic. The third message got his attention though,

"Hey Jack, guess you're not home," the voice that was identical to his own belonged to his twin brother, MacGyver….


End file.
